Media coverage
Al-Quds Newspaper · 2022
The piece reviews a Foreign Policy article on the shift in Israeli policy toward Hamas, saying that since 2018 Israel encouraged the transfer of Qatari funds into Gaza in hopes of buying calm, but former Israeli officials and experts argued that the policy appears to have backfired. It also discusses criticism of past Gaza reconstruction mechanisms and cites Omar Shaban’s call for a Palestinian national body independent of both Hamas and the Palestinian Authority to coordinate reconstruction with international institutions, while concluding that lasting peace requires a deeper political shift beyond managing Palestinian division.
The piece reviews a Foreign Policy article on the shift in Israeli policy toward Hamas, saying that since 2018 Israel encouraged the transfer of Qatari funds into Gaza in hopes of buying calm, but former Israeli officials and experts argued that the policy appears to have backfired. It also discuss…
Washington – سعيد عريقات – Anchal Vohra wrote an article published by *Foreign Policy* on Wednesday under the title, “Israel’s Big New Shift in Policy Toward Hamas,” opening by saying that beginning in 2018, an envoy of the State of Qatar traveled with millions of dollars neatly packed in Louis Vuitton bags from Doha to Lod Airport, and was escorted to the Gaza Strip by men from Israel’s Mossad.
The writer says: “Yossi Cohen, the former head of Mossad, visited Qatar to agree on the details of this arrangement and encourage the Qataris to continue providing these funds, which helped buy fuel for the only power plant in the besieged Strip, financed infrastructure projects there, and provided a monthly salary of $100 to each family among thousands of poor Palestinian families.”
Vohra attributes to Israeli intelligence officials their saying that they knew Hamas was appropriating these funds, and that the prevailing belief was that “Qatari cash would keep Hamas quiet—that it would buy its silence and persuade it not to fire rockets at cities in southern Israel,” but many former Israeli officials told *Foreign Policy* that this policy appears to have backfired. Eran Lerman, the former deputy of the Israeli national security adviser, said: “Did the Qatari approach work for us? We don’t think so.”
The writer points out that “in the latest war with Hamas, Israelis were surprised by the group’s ability to launch rockets deep into Israeli cities, as the group fired 4,360 rockets over 11 days—four times what it fired in the 50-day war in 2014,” and that “for a brief period, the rockets exhausted Israel’s Iron Dome missile defense system, and despite strict Israeli surveillance, Hamas built a more complex maze of tunnels under the coastal enclave to conceal its arsenal.”
According to the writer, “Israelis claim they destroyed much of Hamas’s ammunition and hideouts in 2014, and they insist that the renewal of Hamas’s facilities could only have happened with the help of Qatari money, as they suspect Hamas used a large portion of the Qatari cash to replenish its weapons stockpile and buy the materials needed to expand the tunnel network. Last week, Israel refused to allow the monthly $30 million aid provided by Qatar to be delivered directly to the Gaza Strip, and Hamas responded quickly by threatening to reconsider the existing ceasefire.”
She adds: “But the Israelis are now determined to recast their strategy: instead of money for quiet, they now plan to use reconstruction funds as leverage against Hamas’s rearmament. There is support for such ideas among American policymakers, especially since the international community appears weary of investing in rebuilding infrastructure in Gaza if it is to be destroyed in airstrikes a few years later. But human rights activists and relief organizations warn that such a policy may not achieve its intended goal and could prolong the suffering of the Palestinian people.”
Vohra says: “U.S. President Joe Biden said that the United States would help rebuild Gaza through the Palestinian Authority and within a United Nations mechanism. It is not yet clear what kind of monitoring mechanism the United States has in mind, but Palestinians hope it will not be the same mechanism that was established in 2014. The Gaza Reconstruction Mechanism (GRM), a tripartite body consisting of the United Nations as an intermediary between Israel and the Palestinian Authority, was formed at a conference in Cairo in order to rebuild Gaza in a way that would prevent dual-use materials from ending up in Hamas’s hands. Its operations were highly bureaucratic and slowed the pace of reconstruction, and yet Hamas is suspected of stealing materials designated for civilian infrastructure.”
She explains: “In addition, many Arab countries were reluctant to donate funds out of fear that they might ultimately find their way to Hamas. Palestinian intellectuals warned that the Gaza Reconstruction Mechanism would fail to help Palestinians and deter Hamas from making or launching rockets, among them Omar Shaban, founder and director of a Gaza-based think tank called PalThink. He said that instead of the United Nations chasing every bag of cement, a national body of Palestinians, independent of Hamas and the Palestinian Authority, should have been formed to carry out the reconstruction mission in coordination with international bodies such as the World Bank and the European Union.”
The writer quotes Mkhaimar Abu Saada, an associate professor and head of the Department of Political Science at Al-Azhar University in Gaza, as saying that it is impossible to prevent all reconstruction materials from reaching Hamas’s hands, explaining that “all materials and financial aid go to families, but ultimately some of these families are connected to Hamas; no less than 30% of Gaza’s population support Hamas.”
But he (Abu Saada) added that Israeli policies encouraged Hamas’s rise rather than obstructing its activities in Gaza, and said that the agreement with Qatar was aimed at keeping Hamas in the picture in Gaza, with the ultimate objective of ensuring Palestinian division in order to indefinitely avert political dialogue.
He continued that “Netanyahu’s strategy was to weaken the Palestinian Authority, avoid serious peace negotiations, and empower Hamas. He often said that internal divisions among the Palestinians serve Israel’s strategic interest; in this way Hamas was deliberately kept alive, and if Israel blames Qatar, it should blame itself and Netanyahu as well.”
The writer says: “Qatar insists that the aid was provided in agreement with Israel, and that the Israelis are fully aware of how this money is used. Nevertheless, Israel wants to replace Qatar, the backer of Hamas and the Muslim Brotherhood, with the Arab bloc opposed to it, so that it will take the lead in reconstructing the Gaza Strip in the future.”
The writer attributes to Dr. Col Lerman his saying: “Egypt announced a donation of half a billion dollars, and one wonders where this money will come from given that it is a poor country, but I would not be surprised if this money were Emirati in order to replace Qatar, and we want Egypt to be in the القيادة seat.”
The writer concludes the article by indicating that experts from across the political spectrum in Israel and the occupied Palestinian territories believe it is impossible to completely disarm Hamas, and that it is naive to think the movement will not retain pieces of reconstruction materials and aid sent to Gaza. But a shift in Israeli policy—from keeping the Palestinians divided and keeping Hamas as an effective governing authority, to delegitimizing the movement inside Gaza and engaging in a meaningful political solution with the Palestinian Authority based in the West Bank—remains the only way to achieve lasting peace.
Text © Al-Quds Newspaper — archived here with attribution to the source. — Machine translation for archival reference. — Original source