Israel says it killed Hamas finance chief in Gaza while reinforcing West Bank after car‑ramming attack
The IDF says a strike in Khan Younis killed Abu Alwan, Hamas’ head of finance, as it deploys the 98th Division to take charge of key brigades in the Hebron and Bethlehem areas after a serious car‑ramming at a West Bank checkpoint. The moves point to Israel trying to disrupt Hamas funding networks while tightening control over restive parts of the West Bank.
Israel is escalating pressure on Hamas in Gaza and tightening its grip on parts of the West Bank after a new attack on its forces.
The Israel Defense Forces announced that they had killed Abu Alwan, described by the IDF as Hamas’ head of finance, in a targeted strike on the Khan Younis area in the southern Gaza Strip. According to the military, Alwan led Hamas’ finance department for the past 10 years and was involved in budgeting across all of Hamas’ branches. The IDF said he had transferred over 1 billion shekels—around 329 million US dollars—to Hamas’ military wing over the last decade. These details come from the IDF; they have not been independently verified.
In the West Bank, the army is responding to what it calls a recent small uptick in unrest and attacks by Palestinian groups. The IDF said an Israeli reserve soldier from the Benyamin Regional Brigade was seriously injured when a Palestinian driver carried out a car ramming at the Maccabim checkpoint. Soldiers shot and killed the attacker on the scene, and the wounded reservist was evacuated to a medical facility. Following the attack, the IDF closed checkpoints and set up roadblocks in the area.
Against that backdrop, the IDF announced that the 98th Division will be deployed to the West Bank to assume command of the Judea and Etzion Brigades. Those brigades are responsible for operations around Hebron and Bethlehem, two of the most sensitive and heavily contested cities in the territory.
The combination of a claimed high‑value assassination in Gaza and a division‑level deployment in the West Bank suggests the army is preparing for sustained friction on both fronts: trying to weaken Hamas’ financial infrastructure over time while increasing its presence in areas where it sees growing risk of attacks.
What will show whether this is a short spike or the start of a longer campaign are the next sets of decisions: whether Israel releases further evidence on Abu Alwan’s killing or Hamas acknowledges his death, and how intensive the 98th Division’s operations become in and around Hebron and Bethlehem in the coming weeks.
Sources
- OSINT