Deisim update 20213/2/2024 ![]() Major General Amos Gilad, a former senior Israeli Defense Ministry official, speaks to CNN in Tel Aviv on December 5. There was also an illusion, he added, that “if you fed them (Hamas) with money, they would be tamed.” There was also some belief that it would “weaken Palestinian sovereignty,” he said. Major General Amos Gilad, a former senior Israeli Defense Ministry official, told CNN the plan was backed by the prime minister, but not by the Israeli intelligence community. PA officials said at the time the cash transfers encouraged division between Palestinian factions. Israeli and international media have reported that 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 PA and prevent the establishment of a Palestinian state. “We deferred completely to the Israelis as to whether this was something they wanted to do or not,” the official said. 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. 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. 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).”Īhmad Majdalani, an Executive Committee member at the Palestine Liberation Organization in the West Bank, accused the United States of orchestrating the payment. Israel approved the deal in a security cabinet meeting in August 2018, when Netanyahu was serving his previous tenure as premier.Įven then, Netanyahu was criticized by his coalition partners for the deal and for being too soft on Hamas. The PA opposed the Qatari funding at the time, which Hamas said was meant for the payment of public salaries as well as medical purposes. What did Israel know about Hamas’ October 7 attack? 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, an Israeli government source with knowledge of the matter told CNN at the time.įirefighters work to put out a fire in an open field, following a mass-infiltration by Hamas gunmen from the Gaza Strip, near a hospital in Ashkelon, southern Israel October 7, 2023. Some $15 million were sent into Gaza in cash-filled suitcases – delivered by the Qataris through Israeli territory after months of negotiation with Israel. In 2018, Qatar began making monthly payments to the Gaza Strip. Here’s what we know about those payments and Israel’s role in facilitating them. Israeli sources responded by pointing out 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. We will continue to do it systematically as we did it before,” Al-Khulaifi said. Our mandate is our continuous help and support for our brothers and sisters of Palestine. Qatari minister of state for foreign affairs Mohammed bin Abdulaziz Al-Khulaifi told CNN’s Becky Anderson on Monday that his government will continue to make payments to Gaza to support the enclave, as it has been doing for years. Qatar has vowed not to stop those payments. ![]() ![]() In a series of interviews with key Israeli players conducted in collaboration with Israeli investigative journalism organization Shomrim, CNN was told Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu continued the cash flow to Hamas, despite concerns raised from within his own government. How the tiny Arab state of Qatar became indispensable in talks with Hamas Jacquelyn Martin/Pool via REUTERS Jacquelyn Martin/Reuters Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Qatari Emir Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani attend a meeting in Lusail, Qatar, Friday Oct.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply.AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |