Current & Former CT Blog Experts Focus on Hamas
By Andrew Cochran
Current and former Contributing Experts are writing and commenting on Hamas' future and financing as it assumes control of the Palestinian Authority. Matthew Levitt, who posted here while he was a senior fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, wrote, "Hamas: Politics, Charity, and Terrorism in the Service of Jihad" before assuming a senior position with the Treasury Department. The book will be released by Yale University Press soon. The Washington Institute describes the book as follows: "In the book, Levitt demolishes what he terms 'the myth of disparate wings.' The notion that Hamass military, political, and social wings are distinct from one another is belied by ample evidence. In fact, the records show, Hamas meets in the mosques and hospitals it maintains to plan terror attacks, buries caches of arms and explosives under its own schoolyard playgrounds, and transfers and launders funds for terrorist activity through local charity committees." In an interview with the Council on Foreign Relations, Matthew predicted, "Being the government, I don't think, is going to moderate Hamas in the least. And the reason for that is they have a model they have already articulated that they intend to follow, which is the model of Hezbollah in the north."
This week's edition of "National Journal" includes an article by veteran reporter Marc Perelman, "Hamas's Banking Handmaidens," about the investigation into the Arab Bank for serving as a conduit for funds to Hamas (Acrobat file available with express permission and gratitude). In February 2005, the Treasury Department's OCC ordered Arab Bank to cease its banking activities in its New York branch, and later the OCC fined the Arab Bank $24 million because of especially serious inadequacies in its money transfer operations. Dennis Lormel is cited as a source, and I was quoted: "Its troubling that the Justice Department has not made any public move with regards to the Arab Bank, because they have had all the evidence from Treasury for months."
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