News
NGO boss arrested on suspicion of funnelling money to Hamas
The director of the NGO World Vision in Gaza has been arrested by Israel, accused of funnelling millions of pounds of the charity’s money directly to Hamas.
According to Israel’s security agency ‘Shin Bet‘ , which lifted a gag order on the arrest yesterday, Mohammed El-Halabi was allegedly transfering $7.2m (£5.5m) annually to Hamas. This equates to 60 per cent of World Vision’s total budget spend for Gaza. The money was used to build Hamas terror infrastructure and paying the salaries of Hamas terrorists.
One Hamas “military” base, codenamed “Palestine”, was built entirely from money from British donors diverted by El-Halabi in 2015.
The Shin Bet believes that El-Halabi was tasked by Hamas to infiltrate an aid NGO. He joined World Vision in 2005, working his way up inside the organisation.
As Director of World Vision’s Gaza office, El-Halabi is believed to have worked with Hamas to set up front organisations that would get grants from World Vision by appearing to match their funding criteria. Various front-organisations included mental health projects for Gaza residents, farmers’ associations and greenhouse construction.
The projects transferred money to Hamas by ’employing’ Hamas terrorists as ficticious employees, issuing hugely-inflated invoices and direct transfers to Hamas. Projects brought supplies and equipment into Gaza which were used as materiel, such as fishing boats which were given to Hamas marine commando units.
El-Halabi used his status as a senior aid NGO figure to visit Israel. He allegedly scouted the ground near to Gaza and used GPS to mark possibe exit sites for Hamas attack tunnels into Israel. It was during a visit to Israel that he was arrested.
World Vision is a partner of Britain’s Disasters Emergency Committee. It was given approximately £800k from DEC’s Gaza appeal from 2014-2016. It now seems likely that much of this money, donated by the British public, was diverted by Hamas.
Some 30,000 tonnes of goods enter Gaza every week from Israel, including food, construction materials, basic and luxury goods. Israel also provides much of Gaza’s water, electricity and cooking gas.