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Hamas Funds Gaza Regime With Taxes, Help From `Islamic Friends' 

Hamas, the party that rules the Gaza Strip and launches rockets at Israel, has a message for its Palestinian residents: Thank you for smoking. Cigarette taxes are among the few sources of income Hamas has left.

Unlike the Palestinian government it replaced last year, Hamas gets no aid from the U.S. and the European Union, which consider it a terrorist group. Israel, which collects customs duties on imports into Palestinian lands, refuses to turn them over to Hamas. Sales taxes also have plummeted because Israel blocks goods crossing into the Mediterranean seaside redoubt.

So Gaza's government is funding its schools, bureaucracy and rocket-launchers from other sources, including fees on license plates, birth certificates and the like; taxes on smuggled cigarettes

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