Israeli security officials would escort Qatari representatives into Gaza to deliver the cash to Hamas, the New York Times reported.
Israeli officials are facing backlash after years of Prime Minister Benjamin "Bibi" Netanyahu quietly allowing Hamas to remain in power.
But reporting in the New York Times has revealed that Netanyahu's government was more hands-on about helping Hamas: they helped a Qatari diplomat bring suitcases of cash into Gaza, indirectly boosting the militant organization, according to the report.
The calculus — the Times reported on Sunday, citing Israeli officials, Netanyahu's critics, and the man's own reported statements — was to keep Hamas strong enough to counteract the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank, allowing Netanyahu to avoid a two-state peace solution and keep both sides weak.
Israeli security officials got it wrong; they didn't think Hamas was capable, or even interested, in launching a large attack against the Jewish state.
It makes a sick kind of sense. If you're one of the conservatives in power in Israel, and you oppose a two-state solution that would give Palestinians autonomy, keep two weaker factions fighting each other rather than stabilizing a new country.
It doesn't excuse the inhuman barbarism committed by Hamas against civilians, but it does mean Netanyahu should be immediately removed from power and arrested.
The Palestinian Authority is the only organization there with any actual legitimacy, and had Israel publicly, openly supported it, Hamas could never have gotten a foothold, while the Palestinian Authority would have had reason to normalize relations with Israel.
Ummm, are you sure you responded to the right comment? I didn't suggest Israel install a government in Gaza. I described something Netanyahu and his fellow conservatives did to keep Palestine from stabilizing, and I said Israel could have avoided the current state of affairs by not doing that.
Conservative israelis def destablized palestinian government. But they cant prop hamas or pla. Palestinians have to do that. The conservative Israeli government just destablized hamas
The article is literally about Israel stabilizing Hamas to keep it and the Palestinian Authority struggling for control and keeping Palestine destabilized overall.
It's not necessarily new information, just that the NYT has conglomerated everything we already knew into a single article.
But it's been pretty well known that Netanyahu and Israel were responsible for Hamas existing and being funded in the first place, in order to undermine the Palestinian Authority that was actually making progress toward a two state solution, which Israel really hasn't been in support of for decades, but had to pretend they supported to stay the "good guys".