The IDF warned on Thursday morning of a significant strengthening of Hamas, stemming directly from the unprecedented volume of humanitarian aid trucks entering the Gaza Strip each day, Army Radio reported.

According to the data, approximately 600 trucks enter the Strip each day, about 4,200 per week—four times the volume deemed necessary by the UN for Gaza’s population—about 134 trucks per day.

Since the war began, 112,000 aid trucks have entered the Strip—half of them in just the last three months, since the agreement reached in October 2025. This means that in three months, as many aid trucks entered as in the previous two years combined.

According to IDF sources, the massive volume of goods being brought in is exploited by Hamas for economic and military buildup, among other things, through collecting taxes from private merchants, control of smuggling networks, and direct appropriation of goods.

Goods smuggled into Gaza, including cigarettes, tobacco, electronics, mobile phones, and dual-use agricultural materials, are funneled not only through aid convoys but also via border crossings and through breaches along the Gaza border—sometimes under cover of Israeli security operations involving civilian contractors.

With the Rafah crossing expected to reopen this Sunday, senior IDF officials are recommending to the political leadership to insist that it be used solely for the passage of people, not for transferring goods from Egypt to Gaza, as was the case before October 7. “That would be a disaster,” military officials warned, noting that prior to the war, most of Hamas’s military buildup came through shipments entering via Rafah, with thousands of trucks passing through each year despite repeated security warnings.

IDF assessments indicate that Hamas is unconcerned about the technocratic committee established to manage Gaza’s civil affairs, and in fact, the terror group may even cooperate with the committee—ceding formal administrative control while retaining de facto military dominance, similar to Hezbollah’s model in Lebanon.

The IDF further cautioned that even after the committee begins governing the Strip, most of Gaza’s civil service workers—tens of thousands of government employees—are Hamas members who doubled as Hamas officials for the past two decades. The IDF emphasized that at the very least, the senior members of this bureaucracy—such as mayors and hospital directors—must be replaced but acknowledged that doing so will be highly difficult.

(YWN Israel Desk—Jerusalem)