“Fatima’s” brother used to work as a street vendor, selling vegetables his mother grew. But Hamas police in Gaza would confiscate his wares, demanding bribes to let him work and threatening him with jail, beatings, and worse.

Under Hamas rule, the line between taxation and racketeering is a blurred one. According to Palestinian polling, 73 percent of Palestinians believe Hamas institutions are corrupt. In 2019, after Hamas imposed a series of new taxes, approximately 1,000 Gazans waged street demonstrations under the banner “We Want to Live.” One protester observed, "Dozens of Hamas officials have grown their wealth through financial corruption” while "draining our people by imposing more taxes [and] ignoring [our] poverty.” In 2022, the U.S. Treasury Department designated a Hamas finance official and a network of Hamas-affiliated individuals and companies for having funneled over $500 million into a secret investment portfolio, noting that Hamas “has generated vast sums of revenue … while destabilizing Gaza, which is facing harsh living and economic conditions.”

The kind of extortion “Fatima” describes has also driven many Gazans, including her brother, to flee the Strip. A 2018 poll found that 48 percent of Gazans want to emigrate. The journey is a dangerous one, leaving would-be migrants vulnerable to further exploitation by black market smugglers. One mother recounted how her escape to Belgium with an autistic daughter cost $11,000 in bribes. Others perish in the attempt. In 2014, nearly 400 Gazans drowned after smugglers rammed their boat as it attempted to flee to Europe. As one young man put it, “there isn’t anyone [here] who doesn’t know someone who’s migrated to Turkey to sell his organs to help his parents… Hamas glorifies itself as the resistance to the occupation, but they sit in their palaces with their Qatari passports while we pay the price.”