Hamas

Hamas is facing a new problem in Gaza: coming up with the cash it needs to pay its rank and file.

Israel last month cut off supplies of humanitarian goods to the enclave, some of which Hamas had been seizing and selling to raise funds, according to Arab, Israeli and Western officials. Its renewed offensive has targeted and killed Hamas officials who played important roles in distributing cash to cadres and sent others into hiding, Arab intelligence officials said.

A billionaire Palestinian-American developer accused by Oct. 7 victims’ families of “aiding and abetting” Hamas has resigned from his position on the dean’s council at Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government, The Post can reveal, with the school acknowledging the civil complaint “raises serious allegations.”

The Israeli military on Saturday acknowledged that the initial accounts from troops involved in the killing last month of 15 people in southern Gaza — who the United Nations said were paramedics and rescue workers — had been partially “mistaken.”

The assessment, which was shared in a briefing with reporters by an Israeli military official, came the day after a video obtained by The New York Times appeared to contradict the military’s earlier version of events. The official spoke on the condition of anonymity under army rules.

The Israeli military has provided new details that changed its initial account of the killing of 15 emergency workers near the southern Gaza city of Rafah last month but said investigators were still examining the evidence.

The 15 paramedics and emergency responders were shot dead on March 23 and buried in a shallow grave where their bodies were found a week later by officials from the United Nations and the Palestinian Red Crescent. Another man is still missing.

Israel has admitted to mistakenly killing over a dozen Palestinian aid workers when troops fired on emergency vehicles last month in Rafah.

Mobile phone footage appeared to contradict claims by Israel’s army that it shot at “terrorists [in] suspicious vehicles” during a controversial attack.

The video was recovered from the phone of a Palestinian paramedic who was one of 15 humanitarian workers killed by Israeli forces in the attack on March 23, according to the United Nations and the Palestine Red Crescent Society (PRCS).

The Israel Defense Forces acknowledged on Saturday evening that it had been incorrect in its initial account of an incident in southern Gaza’s Rafah last month during which troops fired on Palestinian emergency vehicles, killing 14 or 15 medics whose bodies were later recovered from a mass grave.

The agency has consistently concealed Hamas’s abuses and misrepresented Israel’s counterterrorism efforts.

An Israeli strike in southern Gaza killed senior Hamas leader Salah Bardawil, according to the Associated Press.

Bardawil was a Palestinian parliament and political bureau member and was among at least 26 people killed in the Israeli strikes between Saturday night and Sunday morning. 

Bardawil’s wife was also killed by the strike.

Israeli airstrikes pounded Gaza, killing more than 400 people, Palestinian health authorities said on Tuesday, threatening the complete collapse of a two-month ceasefire as Israel vowed to use more force to free hostages held by Hamas.

The Palestinian militant group, which still holds 59 of the 250 or so hostages seized in its October 7, 2023 attack on Israel, accused Israel of breaching the ceasefire and jeopardising efforts by mediators to secure a permanent truce.