Netanyahu: "We allowed Qatar to fund Hamas to keep the Palestinians divided."

BarcelonaSince the Palestinian attack on October 7 on Israeli military bases and towns near the Gaza Strip, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, He insists on not answering questions that could end his political career.The Palestinian action, carried out from a small territory that had been under a strict blockade for eighteen years, was the greatest security failure in Israel's history. It left more than 1,200 dead and 250 kidnapped, and turned thestatus quo within Palestine and throughout the region. How it was possible that the sixth most powerful army on the planet couldn't stop it and took almost 48 hours to regain control remains a major mystery. And even more so, how Hamas was able to organize an action of this magnitude with the Strip under strict siege. So far, Netanyahu has focused solely on trying to shift the blame onto senior military and security officials. But on Wednesday night, the Israeli prime minister admitted in a press conference which had given Hamas a boost by allowing it to be financed with Qatari money, with one goal: to deepen the division among the Palestinians. The policy that led to allowing Qatar to transfer money to Gaza "was unanimously accepted by the security cabinet"? "Why did we want to keep Hamas and the Palestinian Authority divided?" he asserted. And he again shrugged off responsibility, asserting that this was the recommendation of the Shin Bet, the domestic secret services, and the Mossad, the foreign intelligence services.

For years, the Qatari government controlled the administration, while Israel continued to control the entry of goods and subject the Gazan population to what one Israeli minister called a "weight-loss diet." Since Hamas won the 2006 elections for the Palestinian Authority, in an electoral process certified by the Carter Foundation, Israel, the United States, explosive. A decade later, Israel asked Qatar to send its petrodollars to the Strip. This funding was maintained until September 2023, a month before the Palestinian attacks. The gamble also involved making Gaza and the West Bank two Palestinian islands disconnected from each other with political dynamics (the Islamists of Hamas in one case and the Palestinian Authority in the other) facing each other.

Specifically, a Shin Bet investigation in March revealed that Qatar was transferring approximately $30 million a month to Gaza and claimed that it ended up in the hands of Hamas's armed wing, with the approval of the Netanyahu government. It was only a few weeks ago that the prime minister dismissed Shin Bet chief Ronen Bar, who had requested this state commission to investigate on October 7. And just this Wednesday, shortly before Netanyahu appeared at a press conference, it was made public that the Israeli Supreme Court had ruled that Bar's dismissal was "unfair and illegal." Judges Isaac Amit and Daphne Barak-Erez indicated that the government failed to fulfill its duty to bring the case to the Advisory Committee on Appointments, according to the attorney general.

More Qatargate

Netanyahu insisted in the press conference on denying that Qatari money was used to finance the October 7 attacks. His argument is that they were attacks low cost: Hamas militants "carried sandals, old Kalashnikovs, vans" pick-up, things that are cheap." He also insisted that the tunnels through which weapons and goods entered Gaza did not penetrate Israeli territory. And although his deputies and those of his allies in the government continue to prevent the establishment of a commission of inquiry into what happened that day, Netanyahu assured that responsibility must be held: "But we need an objective commission, one that is not biased." And again he shook off his fleas: "How is it possible that there was no one next to the fence [in Gaza]? How is it that the aviation did not receive the order to operate until hours after the attack?"

Journalists took the opportunity to ask him about the scandal of the Qatargate, for bribes to senior Israeli officials from Doha in exchange for a positive image of the emirate. Netanyahu, who has had to testify before the court investigating the case, for which two of his closest advisors have been arrested, said he knew nothing and that Qatar "is not a friendly state" to Israel.