JERUSALEM — During the decade leading up to October 7, Israel’s policy toward Hamas could be defined as “money for hush.” In this context, most attention was focused on the hundreds of millions transferred to Gaza each month by Qatar with Israel’s approval. However, new data obtained by the N12 news channel reveals that Israel itself also maintained extensive trade relations with Gaza, allowing in over a million trucks that helped Hamas strengthen its rule and build its terror infrastructure.

According to data obtained by N12 from the Ministry of Defense through a Freedom of Information request submitted with the Movement for Freedom of Information, from 2015 to 2023, an average of about 117,000 goods trucks entered the Gaza Strip each year. These trucks carried a wide range of goods—from food and medical equipment to livestock, communication gear, fuel, and gas.

Some of the goods that entered were used by Hamas to build its terror infrastructure, particularly its vast underground tunnel network. Over the nine years leading up to the war, around 90,000 cement trucks, 21,000 iron trucks, 11,000 infrastructure equipment trucks, and—most notably—382,000 aggregate trucks (a type of gravel used for construction) entered Gaza. About a third of the trucks that came from Israel to Gaza carried this material.

“Hamas’s rule was strengthened by the economic ties with Israel,” says Yitzhak Gal, a Middle East economy expert from the Dayan Center, to N12. “Hamas knew how to profit from everything that entered the Strip. When goods came in from Israel, Hamas set up a checkpoint a kilometer from the entry point, and took its cut from every ton. Israel exported almost everything to Gaza, except for goods that had a comparative advantage to be imported from Egypt. Everything else came either from or through Israel. Food, vegetables, construction materials, everything that was allowed into Gaza.”

According to Gal, the materials that came in from Israel undoubtedly reached Hamas. “Hamas had more than a few ways to take what it needed. Where did all the construction materials for those tunnels come from? They weren’t produced in Gaza. No one’s found a cement factory in Gaza. Construction materials entered in very large quantities from Israel and Egypt, and Hamas had first priority.”

As reported by VINnews