Netanyahu Backed Qatar Funding For Hamas: New York Times

Just weeks before Hamas launched the deadly Oct. 7 attacks on Israel, the head of Mossad arrived in Doha, Qatar, for a meeting with Qatari officials.

As far back as December 2012, Netanyahu told prominent Israeli journalist Dan Margalit that it was important to keep Hamas strong, as a counterweight to the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank. I Photo: U.S. Air Force Staff Sgt. Jack Sanders I U.S. Secretary of Defense

For years, Qatar had been sending millions of dollars a month into the Gaza Strip — money that helped prop up the Hamas government there. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel not only tolerated those payments, he had encouraged them, Mark Mazzetti and Ronen Bergman reported for the New York Times.

The Qatari payments have been widely known and discussed in the Israeli news media for years. Netanyahu’s critics find them as part of a strategy of “buying quiet.”

Netanyahu has lashed back at that criticism, calling the suggestion that he tried to empower Hamas “ridiculous.”

Those payments were part of a string of decisions by Israeli leaders, military officers, and intelligence officials — all based on the flawed assessment that Hamas was neither interested in nor capable of a large-scale attack.

The Times has previously reported on intelligence failures and other faulty assumptions that preceded the attacks.

As far back as December 2012, Netanyahu told prominent Israeli journalist Dan Margalit that it was important to keep Hamas strong, as a counterweight to the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank.

Margalit said Netanyahu told him that having two strong rivals, including Hamas, would lessen pressure on him to negotiate toward a Palestinian state. Netanyahu’s office said he never made this statement.

But Netanyahu would articulate this idea to others over the years.

“The conception of Netanyahu over a decade and a half was that if we buy quiet and pretend the problem isn’t there, we can wait it out and it will fade away,” said Eyal Hulata, Israel’s national security adviser from July 2021 until early this year. Even rightist Netanyahu partners regard Hamas as Israel’s asset.

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