Speaking from Jerusalem, while on a three-country tour of the Middle East, Secretary of State Antony Blinken outlined plans to pour aid into the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip. “We are in the process of providing more than $360 million of urgent support for the Palestinian people,” Blinken announced, albeit acknowledging that he would coordinate with the United Nations, the Palestinian Authority, and Israel “to ensure that Hamas does not benefit from these reconstruction efforts.” However, that Hamas will benefit is a foregone conclusion, and Blinken shows profound ignorance if he does not understand why.
Put aside the fact that Hamas is an authoritarian movement that wields absolute control over the Gaza Strip. In 2007, a year after winning plurality support in Palestinian elections, Hamas rampaged through the Gaza Strip executing any more centrist Palestinian officials who did not have the foresight to flee. No nongovernmental organization, charity, or press outlet can operate without Hamas oversight or buy-in. Blinken may pretend he is not channeling taxpayer money to Hamas shells, but he fools no one in the region. Indeed, prior to pouring money into Gaza, he might ask how Hamas managed to divert thousands of tons of concrete to building military tunnels under the nose of the U.N.
Even if it was possible to invest in Gaza without benefiting Hamas, it’s clear that Blinken fails to understand the fungibility of money. Put aside the fact that conditions in Gaza are not as bad as many progressives suggest. If Washington helps reconstruct schools, electrical substations, and apartment blocks, then U.S. policymakers not only free Hamas from accountability for its past actions, but also allow the group to divert increasing money to its bomb factories and rocket launchers. Of course, such patterns are not limited to Hamas. Palestinian terrorism increased in proportion to international aid. When Secretary of State Mike Pompeo cut off assistance United Nations Relief and Works Agency and Congress enforced the Taylor Force Act to stop Palestinian Chairman Mahmoud Abbas’s “pay-to-slay” schemes, violence declined.
Or, consider the case of Iran. As a result of the European Union’s “critical engagement,” European trade with Tehran almost tripled between 1998 and 2005. During the same period, the price of oil quintupled. Iran took the bulk of that hard currency windfall and invested it in its nuclear program, ballistic missiles, and funding the terror that undermined the Clinton administration’s Middle East peace initiatives. U.S. National Intelligence Estimates in both 2003 and 2007 show that the Islamic Republic built the bulk of Iran’s then-covert nuclear program during the reign of the so-called reformists.
The opposite, that withholding money reduces terror, is also true: In December 2020, I visited Nabatieh, in Hezbollah’s southern Lebanon heartland. Locals told me that Hezbollah was hemorrhaging support for a simple reason: They were out of cash. Iran was hoarding dollars against the backdrop of sanctions, and the Lebanese pound was in free fall. As Blinken has moved to relieve sanctions and unfreeze Iranian assets held in Korea and Iraq, Hezbollah has again grown bold. It is likely no coincidence that Hezbollah waited until Blinken took office before assassinating Lokman Slim, Lebanon’s most prominent anti-Hezbollah activist.
Blinken may luxuriate in the approval of progressives who place an autocratic Hamas and Palestinian Authority above a democratic Israel, and he may confuse popularity in European capitals with strategic wisdom. He should make no mistake, however. He is not performing a humanitarian service but rather planting the seeds for the next round of Hamas and Iranian terror.
Michael Rubin (@Mrubin1971) is a contributor to the Washington Examiner’s Beltway Confidential blog. He is a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute
