Hamas recruits teenagers by stealing food and controlling supply, some experts say
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Jerusalem, 25 June, 2025 (TPS-IL) — Hamas are controlling the food supply as a tactic to garner more teenage recruits, an aid worker in Gaza and experts have told The Press Service of Israel.
In recent weeks, claims of a famine and repeated pressure on Israel to provide food for people in the Gaza strip has led to the establishment of the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF), an American-funded initiative that works alongside Israel to feed Gazans.
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As the focus of world news shifted to the Iran-Israel conflict, TPS-IL spoke to experts and people on the ground to understand what is really happening with the food supply in Gaza.
'Hamas control aid, it's one of their things. We see it all, Hamas act physically. This is not intelligence,' a member of Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories (COGAT), told TPS-IL. '…Hamas takes the aid in Gaza.'
COGAT works to get the food trucks into Gaza. GHF works alongside them, and many other security contractors to deliver meals, something the UN aid agencies are vocal in opposing, claiming that to work with Israel lacks 'impartiality.'
GHF claims to have delivered more than 42 million meals to date, and continues to operate daily, despite having five of their volunteers allegedly murdered by Hamas while doing so.
One expert told TPS-IL that Hamas controls the strip with the aim of ensuring teenagers end up in their ranks. Dr. Igal Shiri, who works at the counterterrorism institute Meir Amit, said: 'Hamas completely control the area (the Gaza strip).
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'Even though there is the massive attack, and you can see Aza is destroyed, with most of Gaza under bombing, they continue to control the civilians. They still control the area with aggression, even under attack.
'Every little bit of food – they stole it. When they get the food, they get the power. The young people in Gaza are not working.
'There is no school, no university, and they have no effective way to earn money, so Hamas has the power.'
He went on to explain that the control starts with the food, but eventually infiltrates every aspect of life in Gaza: 'It's a problem because they still control Gaza, even after 18 months of war.'
Accurate recruitment figures for Hamas are not obtainable due to the unreliability of Hamas reporting, but Joe Biden's Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in January that the U.S. government believed Hamas had recruited almost as many as it had lost since the beginning of the ongoing Israel-Hamas war.
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Other sources claim as many as 15,000 new recruits were added to the group since October 7.
Shiri continued to outline how Hamas use media manipulation to wildly exaggerate claims of starvation, which eventually trickles down into them controlling food supplies: 'It's a narrative that they're starving.'
'If they really cared (about providing for their people and building a country), they would build schools and factories, but they put thousands of billions into constructing tunnels and we have to think why? For 20 years, all they thought about was October 7.
'We got pictures from inside, you can see the food. So they are not starving, but its good to say you are and show pictures of children in the hospital, because that gives them power.'
Another expert, Dr. Nesya Rubinstein- Shemer, who wrote a book on Hamas's ideology and is a professor of Middle Eastern Studies at Bar Ilan University, told TPS-IL that the control of food has been a tactic of terror groups even before Hamas was founded.
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She explained: 'The history of Hamas goes back further than it's establishment in 1987; their roots began as a branch of the Muslim Brotherhood in 1928 in Egypt.
'The Muslim Brotherhood was founded on the (Islamic ideological) basis of 'dawah' – the concept of conquering the hearts of the people and reaching for a firm basis in the population, before trying to achieve a role in the state.
'Muslim Brotherhood belongs to political Islam. The end goal is to gain political power, but they believe that to do that, they first have to gain control over the population.
'Muslim Brotherhood did this first, because the population had it very hard from a social point of view, so they established social structure to help society and provide places to eat, food for the poor, medical treatment, summer camps for youth – a whole kind of social engagement with the population to gain control and support.
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'The main aim was to achieve ideological support, to achieve help from the population in whatever they need.
'After eight years, they established 150 branches all over Egypt, because this is what the population needed, so this is how they gained influence.'
This, she said, is where Hamas garnered it's food-control tactics: 'Hamas did the same in Gaza, before it was established.
'Ahmed Yassin was the establisher of Hamas, but before they were established in 1987, in 1973, Yassin established another organization El Mujjma El Islami – this organization gained control of the population through the establishment of institutions like mosques, kindergartens, schools, and he offered aid in clothes, and food.
'Then came the Hamas movement. Hamas now has perfect control over the population because they control food and humanitarian aid. Many people from Hamas worked in UNWRA.
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'The message put out by Hamas to the people, over time was that 'if you are loyal to Hamas, you can get what you need like fuel, medical supplies, food' – basically everything Israel gave them over the years.'
She went on to detail how Hamas continue to use food to maintain control: 'Hamas are acting as a gatekeeper to the food supply. Additionally, if you (regular Palestinians) resist Hamas, you will be the last in line (for food).'
Finally, she told TPS-IL how Hamas use the image of starvation to maintain control: 'Now what they're doing is perpetuating the narrative of hunger in the world.
'They have Al Jazeera in six languages, which works 24/7 in supplying pictures. Hamas don't care if the population die and suffer – on the contrary, it serves them, because then the world sees and it is translated into political pressure on the world to step in.
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