As the reverberations from Hamas’ attacks on Israeli civilian and military targets continue to dominate the international agenda, it has emerged that the group used cryptocurrencies to finance its unprecedented operation.
Four days after the Al-Aqsa Flood operation of 7 October, Israel announced that its cybersecurity police froze accounts belonging to the Palestinian movement. According to a statement from law enforcement by The Times of Israel, armed groups had been using these accounts since its fighters invaded Israeli positions adjacent to the Gaza Strip.
The statement came from Lahav 433, Israel’s equivalent of the United States Federal Bureau of Investigation. It said it was working alongside the Ministry of Defence and the Shin Bet internal security agency to shut down the cryptocurrency channels used by Hamas and allied groups.
The newspaper reported that Binance, the global cryptocurrency exchange, cooperated with Israel in locating and shutting the accounts, according to the statement from law enforcement. Lahav 433 also cooperated with British police to close a Barclays account involved in its campaign.
Cutting off cryptocurrency transfers came as the latest twist in longstanding and ongoing efforts from the US and Israel to stop the foreign funding of Hamas and its allies, Islamic Jihad and Lebanese Hezbollah.
According to The Wall Street Journal, each of those three organisations received "large volumes" of money through cryptocurrency transfers in the year running up to the 7 October attacks, when the operation is likely to have been planned.