Seven suitcases packed tight with $20 million brought home to Gaza by Hamas FM Mahmoud a-Zahar through Egypt

June 16, 2006, 10:04 AM (GMT+02:00)

The Hamas official was not challenged he passed through Cairo international airport on his way back from a fund-raising trip abroad. But at the Rafah crossing-point from Sinai to the Gaza Strip, the European monitors asked him to explain the small fortune in his luggage and its destination. But then the pro-Abbas Palestinian Force 17 militiamen guarding the Gaza side of the border station asked him to sign a guarantee that the money would be deposited in the Palestinian exchequer. A-Zahar said he would think about it and drove off with the money.

He is the third Hamas official to transit the Rafah crossing into the Gaza Strip carry large amounts of cash. Last month, a Hamas lawmaker transferred $4.5mn in notes. Before him, the Hamas spokesman delivered $800,000. Not a single dollar of these cash deliveries, which were freely processed through Cairo despite the international boycott on the terrorist-ruled government, ever reached the Palestinian national coffers. DEBKAfile’s Palestinian sources report that the cash covered the wages of Hamas’s militiamen and private security force.