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How much does Hamas spend (or used to spend) on its military activities: rockets, arms, tunnels, bunkers, fighters training, etc.?

It is reported that Hamas annual budget is about $2 billion, and that the net worth of the three top Hamas leaders is $11 billion. This can be compared with the combined GDP of West Bank and Gaza, which reached $20 billion in 2022 (Wikipedia reports older numbers, where the GDP is estimated at $10 billion.) (The budget of the Palestinian authority in 2022 was $5.9 billion, about third of which is transferred to Gaza - it is not clear if Hamas diverts part of it to itself.)

I wonder whether Hamas faces a substantial Guns vs. butter trade-off - on other words, whether the well-being of Gazans would significantly increase, if the funds spent on terrorism were diverted to social needs. (Obviously, if Hamas did not attack Israel, there would be no blockade of Gaza, which handicaps its economy. However, I am specifically interested here in Hamas priorities.)

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    Its unlikely Hamas publishes its annual spending - don't think it is likely to tell the world (and Israel) "We spend $1 billion on rockets and have dug an extra $500 million worth of tunnels". This is an interesting question, I just don't think anyone here will be able to answer it.
    – Lio Elbammalf
    Commented Dec 19, 2023 at 13:49
  • @LioElbammalf Agreed. I thought more of something like a journalist investigation or estimates based on how much stuff was fired, exploded, etc.
    – Morisco
    Commented Dec 19, 2023 at 13:51
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    I recall another question here on the networth of the Hamas leaders and it turned out that the billion $ networth figures all came from a single source which seems to have pulled these numbers out of thin air. They are way to big to be plausible but there are no high quality sources on their actual networth.
    – quarague
    Commented Feb 25 at 9:42
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    This skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/51835/… is the question I recalled.
    – quarague
    Commented Feb 25 at 10:15
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    My point is that you write 'it has been reported' which is technically true but not an honest presentation of the current public state of knowledge which is more like 'the networth of the Hamas leadership is not known'.
    – quarague
    Commented Feb 25 at 12:52

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I wonder whether Hamas faces a substantial Guns vs. butter trade-off

According to MEMRI, probably not a significant trade-off. MEMRI says life in Gaza was decent under Hamas, despite the restrictions that Israel imposed on the strip as a result of their activities.

Before the present war, the Gaza Strip – which has not been under Israeli occupation for 18 years, since the Israeli forces withdrew from it in 2005 – resembled a local Dubai more than it resembled the poverty-stricken city that is envisioned by many.

MEMRI is pro-Israeli organization according to Wikipedia.

Just to throw a more concrete figure here on the title (and 1st para) question:

Estimates of its annual military budget range from $100 million to $350 million, according to Israeli and Palestinian sources.

Also, like in Hitler's Germany or in Russia today, the large military expenditure does actually employ people, who apparently got paid, even by Hamas. And then the workers spend that money locally. ToI wrote in 2016 that

$40 million of the annual total goes to terror group’s tunnel digging work, which employs 1,500 Palestinians. [...] The average salary for an excavator is $250-$400 a month — relatively high for the Strip, where unemployment is rampant. [...]

By way of comparison, the budget of the last Hamas government, which dissolved in April 2014, was $530 million. In other words, some 20 percent of the budget was funneled toward arming the group with advanced weapons, digging tunnels, training, and salaries for Hamas fighters.

For comparison, Russia's military expenditure was estimated to be around 14%-16.5% of their budget for 2019–21, and 17.7% in 2022. Current estimates are more difficult because Russia started to publish less data, but that source estimates it's now "37.3 percent of all budget spending, 2.5 times the pre-war average".

Also, there's something not discussed in sources above about Hamas' budget, namely how much military aid Hamas got. I.e., their estimated military budget appears to assume Hamas paid for all the weapons, which is probably more true for the locally produced ones, but less clear for smuggled import parts, especially those of Iranian origin. Hamas themselves have claimed that Iran donated them the equivalent of $70 million in arms and parts, but the time frame is a bit unclear.

Also, Iran might have been less willing to fund social projects in Gaza, instead of arms. And Israel's COGAT less willing to let go through any openly Iranian projects in Gaza, even peaceful ones. So, assuming that all that was a straight trade-off ("guns or butter") requires more complex alternate history assumptions, such as world in which Iran and Israel are not still fighting a shadow war.

I do note that you've phrased that at present tense, but that's probably much harder to answer. What's Gaza's GDP right now, for instance?

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    If one compares that with the total GDP estimate of 10$ billion for Gaza in the question, that comes to 1 to 3.5% of GDP for military expenditure.
    – quarague
    Commented Feb 26 at 7:07

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