The Defense Ministry of Israel reportedly seized 30 digital wallets belonging to businesses associated with the exchange company al-Mutahadun. The authorities accused the latter of funding the terrorist organization Hamas.
Israel’s latest seizure
In 2021, al-Mutahadun was one of the companies designated as a terrorist financing entity by Israeli officials. Specifically, they claimed that the family-owned Shamlah “helps the terrorist group Hamas, and in particular its military wing, by transferring funds amounting to tens of millions of dollars per year”.
According to The Times of Israel, the Defense Ministry, the police, and the military conducted a joint operation, seizing 30 cryptocurrency wallets from 12 accounts belonging to al-Mutahadun. Law enforcement agents revealed that the confiscated digital assets equaled tens of thousands of shekels.
Benny Gantz, the country’s defense minister, commented on the case:
“We continue to expand our tools to deal with terrorism and with companies that supply it with an economic oxygen pipeline.”
Furthermore, he commended the actions of all organizations involved in the operation. “We will continue to work together to fight terrorism by all means and in all ways,” Gantz pledged.
This is not the first time cryptocurrencies have been connected with the Israel-Palestine dispute. Earlier this year, the Israeli government seized more than $800,000 worth of digital assets from a firm linked to Hamas.
Hamas uses Bitcoin and Dogecoin
Last summer, Israel’s National Counterterrorism Financing Bureau confiscated $7.7 million in cryptocurrency from 84 addresses. As in the aforementioned cases, the authorities argued that these funds were intended to finance the Islamic terrorist group Hamas.
Per the seizure order, it became clear that the stablecoin Tether (USDT) was the most used digital asset by the organization. Bitcoin (BTC), Tron (TRX), Ether (ETH), and Dogecoin (DOGE) were the other assets in the top five.
Tension between Israel and the Islamic State of Palestine appears to have eased recently. However, that was not the case last year when the two sides declared war on each other.
While Israel is among the technologically-advanced market economies and relies on its financial stability, Palestine faces significant issues in that field. As such, the Palestinian Monetary Authority revealed intentions to issue its sovereign digital currency. According to some experts, this effort could grant the state a higher level of financial independence:
“As a result, they [the Palestinians] sometimes have to borrow to cover foreign currency payments to third parties and are stuck with an overabundance of Israeli banknotes. This could be one of the reasons why a digital currency would be attractive to the Palestinian monetary system.
