Palestinians admit Gaza not starving, Hamas steals aid

"There is no starvation in Gaza. No one has died of hunger," Khalil Hamada, a senior official at Gaza's Ministry of Justice, told London's Daily Telegraph

via israeltoday.co.il

perhaps this is because Hamas would be blamed for not taking the flotilla aid?

The Christian Science Monitor, relying on conversations with businessmen in Gaza, reports that the Hamas government is benefiting financially from the "blockade" by virtue of its control of the tunnels on the Egyptian border, through a 14.5 percent value-added tax on goods that pass through the tunnels (with an even higher levy on cigarettes), as well as money changing activities and tax revenues. The vast sums of money flowing into Hamas' treasury are being used for the purchase of land and buildings throughout Gaza.²⁶ In testimony before the U.S. House Foreign Affairs Committee on February 25, 2010, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton remarked: "Much of the material that gets in to Gaza, which still comes through the tunnels - through smuggling - actually is taxed by Hamas, which then provides Hamas with the money that they use to buy arms and other material that is used against Israel."²⁷

In an interview with the French newspaper Le Monde on October 10, 2009, Bassem Khoury, minister of national economy for the Palestinian Authority, offered this description:

The shelves of the stores are full, and you can find anything you want if you can pay the price. The cost of real estate has tripled as a result of the tunnel economy. Hamas is benefiting from the situation, since the Palestinian Authority in Ramallah is continuing to pay the salaries of civil servants in Gaza and this is half of our budget. Then these employees buy goods that come in by way of the tunnels, on which Hamas gets paid a tax. The result: the Palestinian Authority's economy is cut off from the VAT revenues that were previously collected [by Israel] for goods imported into Gaza, while Hamas doesn't know what to do with its money.

Khoury emphasized that "taxpayers in Europe should know that as a result of this system their money ends up in Hamas' pocket." He questioned the desire of both Israel and Egypt to combat the smuggling, arguing that everything is done to maintain a status quo of sorts, so long as Hamas is not too strong militarily.²⁸

via jcpa.org