Benjamin Netanyahu-led Israel facilitated Qatar’s $15 million cash aid to Hamas-governed Gaza. Know more

While the war between Israel and Hamas is entering its second month, the hardline Netanyahu government in Tel Aviv is facing the heat for facilitating cash aid worth millions from Qatar to Palestine's Gaza since 2018.

The $15-million cash aid was facilitated by a deal between Qatar and Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. According to a CNN report, Netanyahu continued the cash flow to Hamas, despite concerns raised from within his own government.

However, Israel is now blaming Qatar for sending millions of dollars to Gaza, which is governed by Hamas fighters.

The impoverished Gaza-based Hamas' ability to launch a massive attack on the Jewish country has surprised many. According to a 2020 World Bank report, 61 per cent of the Gaza population is below the poverty line. Against this backdrop, brows were raised when Hamas fighters could afford the October 7 attack on Israel.

Now, while Qatar refuses to stop the aid to Gaza, Israel remarks that successive governments had facilitated the transfer of money to Gaza for humanitarian reasons and that Netanyahu had acted decisively against Hamas after the October 7 attacks.

Qatar began sending cash aid to Gaza in 2018. 

Some $15 million were sent into Gaza in cash-filled suitcases – delivered by the Qataris through Israeli territory after months of negotiation with Israel, CNN reports. 

The payments started after the Palestinian Authority (PA), the Palestinian government in the Israeli-occupied West Bank that is a rival of Hamas, decided to cut salaries of government employees in Gaza in 2017, the CNN report adds. 

Israel approved the deal in a security cabinet meeting in August 2018, when Netanyahu was serving his previous tenure as premier.

Even then, Netanyahu was criticized by his coalition partners for the deal and for being too soft on Hamas.

The prime minister defended the initiative at the time, saying the deal was made “in coordination with security experts to return calm to (Israeli) villages of the south, but also to prevent a humanitarian disaster (in Gaza).”

The US was aware of the Qatari payments to Hamas, a former senior State Department official involved in the region told CNN on condition of anonymity due to the sensitivity of the matter.

Qatar was prepared to provide funds to the Gaza Strip through Hamas as early as the 2014 Israel-Hamas war to alleviate the humanitarian crisis there, the official said, and the US at the time left it up to the Israelis to decide whether they would permit this.

Why did Israel agree to Qatari payments to Gaza?

Benjamin Netanyahu’s plan to continue allowing aid to reach Gaza through Qatar was in the hope that it might make Hamas an effective counterweight to the Palestinian Authority and prevent the establishment of a Palestinian state.

CNN report said that after the 2014 war, Israel felt it was better off with Hamas controlling Gaza as opposed to multiple Islamist groups, or leaving it in a political vacuum.

Did the move backfire for Benjamin Netanyahu?

Benjamin Netanyahu has come under increasing criticism as the depth of his government’s involvement in the move, as well as the motivations for it, come to light again.

The funding deal is one reason why many Israelis today place part of the blame for the October 7 Hamas terror attack on Netanyahu personally. 

Criticism of Benjamin Netanyahu among Israelis soared after the attack, with many blaming the prime minister for failing to prevent it.