New smaller Jersey Battle of Flowers 'will return to its roots'
Earlier this week, accounts for the Battle of Flowers were leaked, showing significant losses.In 2024, there was a deficit of more than £150,000 on top of a loss in 2023 of more than £80,000.This week also saw the Battle Strategy Group meet with Morel and exhibitors to try and find a way forward for the event. Martyn Maguire confirmed there were plans to stage the event in August as normal, with a day parade on Friday 8 and a night parade on Saturday 9.
'Debts need settled'
He said: "We are getting close to getting battle out of the woods."Obviously debts need to be settled. Battle does have some assets - we're going to use those to secure against the debt, and then hopefully we'll get that behind us, but it's going to take time."We're only going to spend what we've got. We know what we're doing. We've got a lot of very experienced exhibitors on the team."We're going to take battle back to its roots. We're going to put on a really good parade with lots of things in the parade, but we're not going to over-step ourselves... simply because we can't afford it".
Speaking to the BBC, Morel said all parties were working together to find a way to hold a parade.He said: "It won't be the main type of parade down the avenue, but something through town on a smaller scale, using junior floats and the smaller floats."I'll only give that money on receipt of a good business plan. And so that's the next stage for the group involved is to create that business plan and bring that forward. "What we're talking about is a much smaller event, a free event, and one I think that could help to reinvigorate the battle and that feeling of bringing it closer to the community."
In a statement, the current Board of the Jersey Battle of Flowers said it remained "committed to working with stakeholders to resolve outstanding financial obligations", and that it "fully supports the Battle Strategy Group as it takes the reins in planning future battle events".
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Photo by Andrew Lichtenstein/Corbis via Getty Images In December 2008, the IDF made another attempt to destroy the insurgents, with a combined air and ground assault into Gaza. This only goaded the militants, who retaliated by firing rockets into Israel. By the time it was over three weeks later, the IDF had killed 1,200 Palestinians, destroyed 46,000 of their homes and rendered 100,000 homeless. The insurgents had killed 13 Israelis. A UN fact-finding mission concluded that Israel had launched 'a deliberately disproportionate attack designed to punish, humiliate and terrorise the civilian population, radically diminish its local economic capability both to work and to provide for itself, and to force upon it an ever increasing sense of dependency and vulnerability'. In 2014, frustrated by the sporadic rocket and mortar attacks from Gaza, Netanyahu launched Operation Protective Edge, which lasted 51 days. 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Simultaneously, however, it reasserted its commitment to the eventual liberation of Palestine 'from the River to the Sea' and, while claiming to disavow anti-Semitism, the document also described Zionism as 'racist, aggressive, colonial and expansionist'. Penetrating its ambiguities led to three possible conclusions: it was a PR exercise; it reflected unreconciled divisions within Hamas; it was a genuine olive branch. Standing in front of the television cameras, Netanyahu crumpled the document in his hand and threw it into a waste basket, saying: 'They want to destroy our state.' As leader of Likud since 1993, Netanyahu had never repudiated the party's founding platform, which (in an uncanny echo of the Hamas document) declared that 'between the Sea and the Jordan there will only be Israeli sovereignty'. As prime minister, he had occasionally hinted that he might be open to the prospect of a two-state solution, but the more he came to depend on political and religious extremists for survival, the clearer he made it that this would never be his agenda. In November 2022, in new guidelines for his cabinet, Netanyahu reiterated that 'the Jewish people have an exclusive right to the entire Land of Israel'. To achieve this, he had convinced himself that the gulf between Hamas and the PA must remain unbridgeable. To that end, he encouraged Qatar to funnel hundreds of millions of dollars into Gaza for Hamas to administer. He has been open about this. As he explained to his Likud parliamentary caucus in March 2019: 'Whoever opposes a Palestinian state must support delivery of funds to Gaza because maintaining separation between the PA in the West Bank and Hamas in Gaza will prevent the establishment of a Palestinian state.' In his complacency, he had allowed himself to presume Qatar's aid combined with a sea blockade and sporadic, lethal IDF operations – which he referred to as 'mowing the grass' – would sedate Gaza indefinitely. It was a fatal miscalculation. By 2023, the predicament facing Gaza had become acute. Virtually cut off from the outside world by the blockade, with no major industries or exports, the territory was almost totally dependent on Israel for water and electricity. According to the CIA's World Factbook, unemployment and dependence on foreign aid each hovered around 50 per cent while the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCRHA) reported that the 'humanitarian' condition of almost a third of Gaza's households was either 'catastrophic' or 'extreme'. With more than 40 per cent of the population under 15, anxiety, depression and post-traumatic stress disorder had soared to levels that were judged likely to cause 'unpredictable' behaviour. 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It has to be presumed that all those who celebrated 7 October as a victory were also able to discount the abduction of 251 hostages, among them frail, sick, and elderly people as well as children, either to be executed or traded as chattels. It was inevitable that Israel would respond with force. No one, though, predicted the scale of punishment that the IDF was about to unleash on the people of Gaza. On 9 October, the Israeli defence minister, Yoav Gallant, announced that he had ordered 'a complete siege on the Gaza Strip' and that there would be 'no electricity, no food, no water, no fuel… We are fighting human animals and we are acting accordingly.' No less ominously, Major General Ghassan Alia, the military coordinator of the government's actions in Gaza, released a video that contained a warning to all Palestinians: 'Hamas has turned into Isis and the residents of Gaza, instead of being appalled, are celebrating. Human animals must be treated as such… You wanted hell, you will get hell.' Before long, excruciating accounts of that 'hell' started to reach the TV screens of the West. Despite Israel's strenuous efforts, it became virtually impossible to be unaware that a human catastrophe was unfolding in Gaza. Although foreign journalists were forbidden to enter the territory (except under close supervision by the military), more than enough images emerged to reveal the extent of Israel's retribution. The IDF have killed scores of thousands of civilians, a large number of whom were small children and babies. Homes, shops, schools and hospitals have been destroyed, displacing 1.5 million terrified, exhausted and hungry people and forcing them to flee multiple times from one insecure 'safe haven' to another. Swathes of Gaza have been razed in a succession of scorched-earth operations. Much of the territory has become a 'free fire' zone in which anyone is liable to be regarded as a terrorist and subject to instant execution. Hundreds of thousands of Palestinians are now huddled in threadbare tents in an ever-contracting small corner of southern Gaza. Israel's increasingly dubious defence has been that the IDF takes every reasonable precaution to avoid civilian casualties. Israeli officials also excuse this loss of life by insisting that the insurgents deliberately use civilians as human shields in every building that is bombed. The evidence for this is sketchy, although when the war is being fought in such extraordinarily confined spaces, civilians are perforce shielding the insurgents merely by being in close proximity to them. But when such arguments are made by the doctors and nurses who risk their own lives to pick up the pieces of human wreckage, they have been routinely dismissed. Palestinians wait to receive meals distributed by a charity in Gaza, July 2025. Photo by Abdalhkem Abu Riash/Anadolu via Getty Images Simultaneously, the West Bank was smouldering. Jewish settlers, with the approval of the Netanyahu government, seized the opportunity to grab even more Palestinian territory, building new settlements in 2023 at a faster rate than at any time since the Oslo Accords. The UN warned that the rapid expansion of the illegal dwellings on the southern periphery of East Jerusalem (where more than 18,000 new units were built in that one year) made it less likely than ever that a Palestinian capital linking that part of the city contiguously to the West Bank (as envisaged in Resolution 242) could ever be established. When, unusually, the Biden administration endorsed a formal UN Security Council statement warning that the 'continuing Israeli settlement activities are dangerously imperilling the viability of the two-state solution based on the 1967 lines', Netanyahu's office had the temerity to issue a public rebuke: 'The statement should not have been made and the US should not have joined it.' The White House has long maintained a unique relationship with Israel. Although successive presidents have sought to broker successive peace deals, they have invariably backed down when Israel demurred, watching on as Israel repeatedly ignored Security Council resolutions and international law. Even in the face of compelling evidence that Israel has committed war crimes, Washington has remained silent. There has never been a whisper of sanctions, let alone a threat, even though Israel has long relied heavily on US largesse for its economic and military security. That is a licence that no other nation enjoys. While the world's attention was focused on Gaza, extremist settlers in the West Bank went on the rampage. Since 7 October 2023, largely unchecked or even encouraged by Israel's security forces, they have terrorised Palestinians. In an unusually strong statement, the British government told the UN General Assembly on 19 September 2024 that it was 'with grave concern' that it had witnessed 'how an increasing number of Israeli settlers have systematically used harassment, intimidation and violence to pressure Palestinian communities to leave their land'. The Israeli government ignored this protest and the attacks did not abate. Every part of the West Bank is now pockmarked by settlements, some of them the size of large towns, all of them in clear breach of international law. Between the end of 1967 and 2025, the number of Jewish settlers on Palestinian land has grown from a few thousand to some 700,000. In January 2025, after 15 months of war, Netanyahu reluctantly agreed to a ceasefire in Gaza. Brokered by the Biden administration working closely with neighbouring Arab states and Qatar (where the political wing of Hamas had re-established its headquarters), the ceasefire had three stages that together were designed to lead to a lasting truce. The first stage, which was to last for six weeks, creaked into action on 19 January. It envisaged an exchange of hostages in return for the release of a much larger number of Palestinians held in detention by the Israelis. Chillingly choreographed by Hamas with a grotesque sense of theatre, it was a gruesome procedure to witness as, step by faltering step, the 25 hostages, some of them emaciated and bewildered, were released into the care of the Red Cross. In return, some 1,800 Palestinians were released from Israeli custody. But as the date for the start of stage two of the ceasefire drew close, doubts grew. Each side found reason to accuse the other of breaching the deal and as negotiations stalled, it became increasingly clear that Netanyahu had no intention of taking his government into stage two, during which, in addition to a further hostage/prisoner swap, Israel was to accept a permanent ceasefire and the withdrawal of all IDF troops from Gaza. Already shimmering on the horizon was stage three, which would inevitably have entailed complex negotiations about the future status of the Occupied Territories and the route towards a two-state solution. For Netanyahu and his far-right cabal of cabinet ministers, both the second and third stages were anathema. By this point, were the Western world not suffused by historic guilt and were Israel not regarded as a vital strategic partner in the Middle East, Netanyahu would already have been widely condemned as a bad actor hellbent on destroying Israel's hard-won status as an oasis of democracy by trampling over international law. When, in November 2024, the International Criminal Court (ICC) issued arrest warrants for Netanyahu and Gallant indicting them for 'the war crime of starvation as a method of warfare; and the crimes against humanity of murder, persecution and other inhuman acts', the Israeli prime minister's response was to accuse the ICC of 'anti-Semitic hatred'. He was apparently unmindful of the fact that the court had simultaneously issued an arrest warrant for Mohammed Deif, the head of Hamas's armed wing, on charges of 'the crimes against humanity of murder; extermination; torture; and rape and other forms of sexual violence; as well as the war crimes of murder, cruel treatment, torture; taking hostages'. Fortunately for Netanyahu, Donald Trump had won the US election and was swift to support his demand that Hamas renegotiate their original ceasefire agreement on terms that would have allowed Israel to renege on its stage-two commitment to withdraw the IDF from Gaza and – once every hostage had been released – to reignite the war. When Hamas rejected that option, Netanyahu collapsed the agreement, ordering the blockade to be reinstated and promising an even more devastating offensive. The renewed onslaught began during the night of 17-18 March 2025, when Israel's forces launched a bombardment by ground and air deep into Gaza. In the space of 24 hours some 400 Palestinians, mainly women and children, were killed. Once again the principal victims were innocent civilians. Day after day, as the government steadily extended the operation, the death toll mounted. Yet again, the IDF was unable or unwilling to avoid further 'collateral damage'. On 3 May, after almost six weeks of relentless bombardment, an IDF spokesman answered critics of the slaughter with a dismissive 'the military takes feasible precautions to mitigate civilian harm'. The Gaza death toll by the end of April 2025 was upwards of 52,000. The humanitarian disaster in Gaza reached a new nadir. With no supplies of any kind permitted to enter, food prices rose by 1,400 per cent; desperate families started to besiege those distribution points that had not closed; young children struggled piteously to reach the front of the queue to hold tin bowls beseechingly above their heads, hoping for a ladle of soup before supplies ran out. In vain, the UN's World Food Programme warned that unless the blockade was lifted, they would soon have to close their projects altogether. Cases of acute malnutrition began to soar. With Gaza on the verge of mass famine and more than half its population at risk of starvation, the Israeli foreign ministry insisted 'there is no shortage of aid in Gaza'. More alarmingly, ministers also fell back on the dubious claim that Israel was under no obligation to allow aid to flow because Hamas had 'hijacked' supplies 'to rebuild its terror machine'. This is despite every international aid agency insisting that there is at best scant evidence that this has happened. By now thoroughly alarmed by the scale of the encroaching calamity, Britain, France and Germany finally roused themselves to make a rare joint statement, describing the blockade as 'intolerable' and demanding it be lifted immediately, although they shied away from adding that to starve more than two million people constitutes a war crime. Israel's furious response was to condemn their stance as 'morally twisted and wrong'. By that point it had become impossible to avoid the conclusion that Israel was guilty of violating two further articles of the Fourth Geneva Convention. (Article 55: 'To the fullest extent of the means available to it, the Occupying Power has the duty of ensuring the food and medical supplies of the population…' And Article 59: 'If the whole or part of the population is inadequately supplied, the Occupying Power shall agree to relief schemes on behalf of the said population, and shall facilitate them by all the means at its disposal.') On 28 April 2025, the International Court of Justice (ICJ) began hearing oral arguments from 40 countries, including Britain as well as China and Russia, seeking guidance on whether Israel might indeed be in breach of international law. Whether or not the ICJ ever indicts Israel, it is unlikely to have any impact on the Israeli government unless the US decides to intervene far more robustly than it has ever done before. Israeli Jews are now deeply split over their government's strategy. The anguished families of the surviving hostages believe that the longer Israel prosecutes the war, the less likely it is that their loved ones will be released alive. With mounting fury, the protesting families have urged Netanyahu to order an immediate ceasefire to secure their safe return. However, a great many Israelis have come to believe that their country now faces an existential threat and have adopted an 'us or them' attitude towards the Gaza war as though forever doomed to be in conflict with the Palestinians. The trauma of 7 October has even convinced some of those who once believed in the two-state solution that it would merely provide another platform for further assaults on Israel. Yet there is a significant group of critics, including some former hostages and their families, human rights activists, some former ministers and many liberals who still believe that Israel's salvation lies in the two-state solution. They have demanded an end to what they describe as Netanyahu's 'political war'. More than 12,000 men and women from every branch of the IDF, ranging from decorated commanders to reservists as well as retirees, have signed a growing avalanche of letters essentially demanding that the government get the last surviving hostages home, even if that means ending the war. The objectors' common theme is blunt: 'The continuation of the war does not contribute to any of its declared goals.' There has also been a sharp fall in the number of reservists willing to serve at the front. A former general has gone so far as to suggest that officers and men should consider disobeying orders to avoid prosecution for war crimes. Among the severest and most cogent critics of the war in Gaza are a small number of Jewish academics, writers and historians who do not shrink from charging the government of Israel with both crimes against humanity and war crimes (as defined by both the 1948 Geneva Convention and the 1998 Rome Statute, which established the International Criminal Court). Among these, Michael Sfard, an eminent civil rights lawyer, has reluctantly been driven to conclude that, sanctioned by its Supreme Court, the state of Israel is guilty of the crime of apartheid as defined by the Rome Statute for its 'inhuman acts' in the West Bank and Gaza. According to Sfard: 'One must turn off the lights, block one's ears, and lower the blinds to avoid the conclusion that Israeli rule in the Occupied Territories meets that definition.' Amos Goldberg, a renowned Holocaust scholar at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, has accused the government of genocide as defined by the 1948 Genocide Convention, a war crime with a particular resonance for Jews, all of whom are acutely and painfully aware that the very notion of genocide arose from the Nazi Holocaust in the Second World War. (Article 2 of the Genocide Convention defines genocide as any one of five acts committed with 'intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group'. This includes 'causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group and deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part', notably by 'subjecting a group of people to subsistence diet, systematic expulsion from homes and the reduction of essential medical services below minimum requirement'). The 7 October massacres – 'a war crime and a crime against humanity' – traumatised Goldberg. For that reason, he found it 'agonising' to describe Israel's war in Gaza as genocide but, on the basis of his own scholarship and witnessing his government's clear resolve 'to turn the whole of Gaza into rubble', he has concluded: 'Yes, it is genocide. And once you come to this conclusion, you cannot remain silent.' In the April 2025 edition of the New York Review of Books, the Israeli-American professor of history and genocide studies at Brown University, Omer Bartov, made the same charge, writing that 'ethnic cleansing' did not adequately describe what is happening in Gaza and that, 'For a year now, it has been impossible to describe the Israeli operation as anything but genocidal.' Bartov is dismayed by the failure of the international community to respond adequately to the scale of the catastrophe. And he has a compelling explanation for this: 'The memory of the Holocaust has, perversely, been enlisted to justify both the eradication of Gaza and the extraordinary silence with which that violence has been met.' It is certainly true that many European nations will never be absolved of their participation in the Holocaust. That guilt persists. When António Guterres, Secretary-General of the UN, has charged Israel with breaches of international law, ministers in Western chancelleries have sat on their hands, making muffled protests but shying away from warning that Netanyahu's government is almost certainly responsible for multiple war crimes, let alone from openly making such allegations. If it takes courage for those Europeans who believe in Israel's right to exist to speak out against the government of Israel, this is doubly so for the Jewish diaspora. Always mindful that the history of the continent has long been stained by anti-Semitism, they are justly fearful of its resurgence. Today they observe ignorant demonstrators mindlessly chanting the slogan 'from the River to the Sea' in capital cities around Europe, and they know that, in Britain and across the continent, Jews have been assailed by threats, assaults and abusive behaviour. They hear the distant but advancing drumbeat of fascism. To many in the diaspora who support a two-state solution and who privately deplore Israel's treatment of the Palestinians, it can seem disloyal, even treacherous, to offer public criticism from abroad when many of their fellow Jews in the Holy Land believe that Israel's struggle against Hamas is for the salvation of all Jewry. That is why an open letter to the Financial Times on 16 April 2025 from 36 leading members of the Board of Deputies of British Jews, including the former president of the Supreme Court, Lord Neuberger, and the prominent author and human rights lawyer Philippe Sands, was such a moment. In breaking an omertà that has stifled so much free speech for many months, they wrote that 'out of love for Israel and deep concern for its future [we can] no longer stay silent on the war… The inclination to avert our eyes is strong, as what is happening is unbearable, but our Jewish values compel us to stand up and speak out… Silence is seen as support for policies and actions that run contrary to our Jewish values… We stand against the war. We acknowledge and mourn the loss of Palestinian life. We yearn for the 'day after' this conflict when reconciliation can start.' This intervention might have led to an open debate within the diaspora, a beneficial side-effect of which would have been to force all but the most irredeemable anti-Semites to recognise that to be Jewish is not to be an apologist for an extremist government in Tel Aviv. Instead, the president of the Board of Deputies, Phil Rosenberg, rebuked the authors for demonstrating a 'deeply regrettable loss of perspective', and then to set up an inquiry into whether the signatories had breached the terms of their engagement as deputies. Netanyahu has shown no sign of relenting. On 5 May his cabinet unanimously approved a revised war plan that would entail the permanent military occupation of every corner of Gaza. Already 70 per cent of the territory had either been declared a military 'red zone' or was under evacuation orders. The plan was to herd the half-starved population of Gaza into an even smaller pocket in the south, almost all of it already razed. To avoid further starvation they would be forced to pass through checkpoints to enter a handful of Israel-controlled food stations operated by private US companies. The UN and international aid agencies pointed out that the scheme would be unworkable as well as illegal. And so it has now proved. It has also been chaotic and violent. The extremists who sustain Netanyahu have made it clear what they expect: a mass 'voluntary' evacuation of Gaza. Israel's finance minister, Bezalel Smotrich, advised explicitly that within six months the territory would be 'totally destroyed', which, he noted, would force 'despairing' Palestinians to seek 'relocation' elsewhere. Reflecting a dramatic surge of popular disgust, European politicians finally spoke out in unambiguous terms to condemn Israel's actions in Gaza. On 20 May, the British Foreign Secretary, David Lammy, declared: 'It is dangerous. It is repellent. It is monstrous and I condemn it in the strongest possible terms.' It is unfortunate that he and his European peers did not speak out many months earlier. Nonetheless, there is talk of suspending trade and applying sanctions, and – something much of the West has assiduously rejected for decades – giving formal recognition to Palestine as a state (a status granted by a majority of UN member countries in 2012). Netanyahu's instant response, repeated furiously by his spokespeople, has been to accuse them of rewarding Hamas for genocide. But Donald Trump, who was apparently troubled by reports of starvation, could not be dismissed so easily. Overriding his far-right cabinet colleagues, Netanyahu had no choice but to allow a trickle of aid to enter the territory. But with hundreds of thousands of lives in peril, a complete lifting of the blockade would be required to avoid mass famine. Nor has there been any evidence that Netanyahu would be diverted from his major strategic objective – in which the hostages appear to be irrelevant – of placing Gaza under permanent military occupation. In effect, this would be annexation, leaving the victims to choose between exile from a 'cleansed' territory and a future of helotry as Jewish settlers or real-estate developers moved in. Whatever happens to the 2.3 million Palestinians in Gaza, the prospective fate for their 3.3 million compatriots in the West Bank is not dissimilar and no less alarming. With widespread popular support – even from those calling for a ceasefire in Gaza – Israel seems to be intent on swamping the territory with settlements. Before long, these Palestinians will also face a choice of accepting their lot as colonial subjects under an apartheid regime, going into exile or rising up in revolutionary fury. If the situation in both Gaza and the West Bank is catastrophic for the Palestinians, it promises to be disastrous for the Israelis as well. The region is already chronically unstable. Public opinion in the authoritarian states that surround Israel is already consumed by rage at what they see, read and hear from the Occupied Territories. It would not take much for that mood to erupt into violent unrest with unpredictable consequences. Elsewhere, Israel's erstwhile supporters, their views reflected openly in the media, are no less aghast. For so long as the country remains in the hands of extremists, it is hard to see Europe's liberal democracies restoring Israel to its traditional place in the diplomatic firmament. In alienating these traditional allies, Israel is at risk of becoming isolated in an alarmingly unstable world whose tectonic plates are shifting in unforeseeable ways. It would also be exceptionally short-sighted for Israel to presume on America's unquestioning and enduring support. The mercurial deal-maker in the White House has just staked his claim on the region and Israel was not in his sightlines. He has already brought Syria in from the cold, and his 'transactional' relationships with the Gulf states, especially Saudi Arabia (which seems to matter to him at least as much as the fate of Israel), suggest that he might easily reach the conclusion that, with Netanyahu in power, Israel is less of a strategic asset than a corporate liability. Nor, surely, is it far-fetched to imagine that his successors, with images of Gaza seared in their retinas, would be any more sympathetic unless and until Israel agrees to withdraw from the Occupied Territories in line with Resolution 242, unlikely as that now appears. But that is to peer into the unknown. As I write, there is talk of another ceasefire. If it happens it will be excessively fragile. Unless Washington insists, nothing will stop Netanyahu once again detonating any deal once the hostages are home again. The future remains grim. In the absence of a miracle, there will be even more bloodshed, more starving and dying children, more illegal settlements, more hatred, more insurgency, more repression, more refugees shuffling towards an unknown fate, an unending cycle of despair. The prospect is tragic beyond words. Clinging to the belief that the only realistic chance of securing lasting peace is the two-state solution even as that disappears over the distant horizon, all that this chronicler can do is reiterate that the Palestinians did exist, do exist and – unless they are annihilated – will exist. This is an edited extract from the updated edition of 'The Palestinians' by Jonathan Dimbleby and Don McCullin, which will be published in October (Quartet Books) [See also: Israel's calculus on Syria] Related
BBC News
4 hours ago
- BBC News
Hamas still pays out salaries and rewards supporters
After nearly two years of war, Hamas's military capability is severely weakened and its political leadership under intense pressure. Yet, throughout the war Hamas has managed to continue to use a secret cash-based payment system to pay 30,000 civil servants' salaries totalling $7m (£5.3m).The BBC has spoken to three civil servants who have confirmed they have received nearly $300 each within the last week. It's believed they are among tens of thousands of employees who have continued to receive a maximum of just over 20% of their pre-war salary every 10 weeks. Amid soaring inflation, the token salary - a fraction of the full amount - is causing rising resentment among the party faithful. Severe food shortages – which aid agencies blame on Israeli restrictions - and rising cases of acute malnutrition continue in Gaza, where a kilogramme of flour in recent weeks has cost as much as $80 - an all-time high. With no functioning banking system in Gaza, even receiving the salary is complex and at times, dangerous. Israel regularly identifies and targets Hamas salary distributors, seeking to disrupt the group's ability to from police officers to tax officials, often receive an encrypted message on their own phones or their spouses' instructing them to go to a specific location at a specific time to "meet a friend for tea".At the meeting point, the employee is approached by a man - or occasionally a woman - who discreetly hands over a sealed envelope containing the money before vanishing without further employee at the Hamas Ministry of Religious Affairs, who doesn't want to give his name for safety reasons, described the dangers involved in collecting his wages. "Every time I go to pick up my salary, I say goodbye to my wife and children. I know that I may not return," he said. "On several occasions, Israeli strikes have hit the salary distribution points. I survived one that targeted a busy market in Gaza City."Alaa, whose name we have changed to protect his identity, is a schoolteacher employed by the Hamas-run government and the sole provider for a family of six."I received 1,000 shekels (about $300) in worn-out banknotes - no trader would accept them. Only 200 shekels were usable - the rest, I honestly don't know what to do with," he told the BBC. "After two-and-a-half months of hunger, they pay us in tattered cash."I'm often forced to go to aid distribution points in the hope of getting some flour to feed my children. Sometimes I succeed in bringing home a little, but most of the time I fail."In March the Israeli military said they had killed the head of Hamas's finances, Ismail Barhoum, in a strike on Nasser Hospital in Khan Younis. They accused him of channelling funds to Hamas's military remains unclear how Hamas has managed to continue funding salary payments given the destruction of much of its administrative and financial senior Hamas employee, who served in high positions and is familiar with Hamas's financial operations, told the BBC that the group had stockpiled approximately $700m in cash and hundreds of millions of shekels in underground tunnels prior to the group's deadly 7 October 2023 attack in southern Israel, which sparked the devastating Israeli military were allegedly overseen directly by Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar and his brother Mohammed - both of whom have since been killed by Israeli forces. Anger at reward for Hamas supporters Hamas has historically relied on funding from heavy import duties and taxes imposed on Gaza's population, as well as receiving millions of dollars of support from Qassam Brigades, Hamas's military wing which operates through a separate financial system, is financed mainly by Iran. A senior official from the banned Egypt-based Muslim Brotherhood, one of the most influential Islamist organisations in the world, has said that around 10% of their budget was also directed to Hamas. In order to generate revenue during the war, Hamas has also continued to levy taxes on traders and has sold large quantities of cigarettes at inflated prices up to 100 times their original cost. Before the war, a box of 20 cigarettes cost $5 - that has now risen to more than $ addition to cash payments, Hamas has distributed food parcels to its members and their families via local emergency committees whose leadership is frequently rotated due to repeated Israeli has fuelled public anger, with many residents in Gaza accusing Hamas of distributing aid only to its supporters and excluding the wider has accused Hamas of stealing aid that has entered Gaza during the ceasefire earlier this year, something Hamas denies. However BBC sources in Gaza have said that significant quantities of aid were taken by Hamas during this Khaled, a widow left caring for three children after her husband died of cancer five years ago, told the BBC: "When the hunger worsened, my children were crying not only from pain but also from watching our Hamas-affiliated neighbours receive food parcels and sacks of flour. "Are they not the reason for our suffering? Why didn't they secure food, water, and medicine before launching their 7 October adventure?"
