The not-so-secret history of Netanyahu’s support for Hamas

From sabotaging Oslo to funneling Qatari cash into Gaza, Bibi has spent his career bolstering Hamas to help perpetuate the conflict. Even after Oct. 7, argues historian Adam Raz, he's still advancing the same strategy.

ByGhousoon Bisharat

When Israeli historian and human rights activist Adam Raz set out to write “The Road to October 7: Benjamin Netanyahu, the Production of the Endless Conflict and Israel’s Moral Degradation,” he knew he was tackling a blind spot in Israeli public discourse. The vast majority of Israelis, Raz believes, fail to grasp the full extent of Netanyahu’s involvement in bolstering Hamas before the current war, and in perpetuating an unending state of conflict.

Raz’s book, released in May of this year, sheds light on a controversial policy whereby Netanyahu’s governments for years routinely approved and encouraged the transfer of Qatari funds into Gaza to prop up Hamas. While noting that the Israeli media has devoted more attention to this policy in the aftermath of October 7, Raz told +972 that this is “just a sliver of the bigger picture,” which is rooted in Netanyahu’s broader opposition to a just resolution to the conflict. “People need to understand the full scope of Netanyahu’s strategy,” he said.

According to Raz, Netanyahu’s priority is not maintaining Israel’s security but preventing any real chance of resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict through the division of land, ending the occupation, or a two-state solution. Keeping the cash flowing to Hamas served this objective by ensuring the Palestinian national movement remained splintered between Hamas in Gaza and the Fatah-controlled Palestinian Authority (PA) in the West Bank, thus allowing Israel to maintain its dominance over the whole of the land. Even after the devastating events of October 7, Raz warns that Netanyahu’s playbook remains unchanged.Top of Form

This book isn’t a history lesson about the conflict, Raz emphasizes, but rather a damning exploration of a political alliance that continues to degrade Israel’s moral fabric. “I didn’t write this book, I yelled it on the pages,” he said. 

I spoke with Raz about the long history of Netanyahu’s symbiotic relationship with Hamas and its recently-killed leader Yahya Sinwar; why the current war represents a continuation of, not a break from, the prime minister’s strategy vis-a-vis the Palestinians as a whole; and why even after more than a year of war and the death of Sinwar, for Netanyahu little has changed. The interview has been edited for length and clarity.

While reading your book, I couldn’t help feeling that you’re a bit obsessed with Netanyahu — that there are no political and security elites in Israel, no national security interests, no public opinion, no media. You write as if it’s just Bibi-land. As a Palestinian, this feels like a way to remove the blame from other decisionmakers and Israeli society writ large and instead place it exclusively on Netanyahu.

This is a book about Netanyahu. I didn’t set out to write the story of the occupation under Netanyahu, the history of Hamas, or the collision between the two national movements. It’s the story of the relationship between Netanyahu and Sinwar. I’m trying to understand the motivation of the two most important actors in this game, who have been holding their societies by the neck.  

Israel is Bibi-land. Whatever is at stake in Israel, whether it’s the Palestinians, the Iran nuclear deal, or any other foreign policy issue, it’s all in Netanyahu’s hands. In my book you can read how this came to be, and how Bibi changed Israeli politics. It’s true that the security establishment was against Netanyahu’s policy toward Hamas, but in every crucial crossroads where he went head to head with them, Netanyahu won. 

One of the central arguments in your book is that Netanyahu’s opposition to a Palestinian state is the main pillar of his policy toward the Palestinians. How did this policy shape his relationship with Hamas, going back to the 1990s?

Netanyahu is the number one opponent of a two-state solution. In broad terms, Fatah and the PLO are in favor of this solution, while Hamas is against it, which means that on this very crucial point, Netanyahu and Hamas’ interests align. So since 1996 [when he was first elected prime minister], and especially since his second term in office from 2009, Netanyahu has been working hard to strengthen Hamas.

From the initial signing of the Oslo Accords in 1993 until the assassination of Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin in 1995 [by an Israeli who opposed the peace process], the PLO and Israel worked together against the influence of both Jewish and Islamic fundamentalism. There was a sort of informal agreement not to build new West Bank settlements and outlining where the settlements that already existed could expand. This marked a shift from the [Yitzhak] Shamir government [that preceded Rabin], which oversaw the construction of approximately 7,000 [settlement] housing units per year. 

One of the first things Netanyahu did as prime minister [in 1996] was to approve the construction of the Har Homa neighborhood in East Jerusalem. During his first term in office, 24 new settlements were built in the occupied territories. Of course, under Rabin, the Israelis did keep expanding the settlements, but this was something the Palestinian negotiators felt they could live with. 

The second important thing Netanyahu did was to open the Western Wall tunnels in the Old City of Jerusalem, triggering the first violent clashes between Palestinians and the Israeli army since the Oslo process began. There had been discussions about this during Rabin’s government, which planned to open the tunnels in coordination with the Muslim Waqf and the Jordanians in exchange for the Waqf receiving control over Solomon’s Stables [an area of the Al-Aqsa compound/Temple Mount]. However, Netanyahu chose to disregard these recommendations and make unilateral changes in one of the most sensitive and sacred sites for all three Abrahamic religions. 

It was clear that this would lead to a crisis — and that is exactly what happened. Netanyahu decided to open the tunnels of his own accord, without informing the government or the security establishment. The top security and military personnel heard about it on the radio. The protests that followed the opening of the tunnels, across East Jerusalem, the West Bank, and the Gaza Strip, resulted in the killing of 59 Palestinians and 16 Israelis. 

The third important thing Netanyahu did, which also went against the advice of the security establishment, was to withdraw Israel’s extradition request for Hamas’ political bureau chief Mousa Abu Marzouq [the leader of the movement’s radical wing at the time who advocated for continuing armed resistance, and the most important Hamas figure outside of Gaza]. That request had been approved by Rabin after Abu Marzouq was arrested while in the United States in 1995. Netanyahu’s decision to withdraw it [and therefore avoid putting Abu Marzouq on trial in Israel] came at a time when many Hamas leaders, including the movement’s founder, Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, were in Israeli jails and there was an internal debate going on about the right way to continue the struggle. 

These three events strengthened Hamas and the people who wanted to see the conflict as a religious one. 

In your book, you mention several occasions in which Netanyahu did publicly express support for some kind of Palestinian state, including his signing of the Wye River Memorandum in October 1998, the famous “Bar Ilan speech” in June 2009, his speech at Congress in May 2011, and his support for Trump’s “Deal of the Century” in 2019-20. How do you make sense of these?

Every time he spoke about it publicly, there was a reason to do so. Take his Bar Ilan speech, for example, which was the best-known instance of Netanyahu “accepting” the two-state solution. There was a foreign policy aspect to this: it was a short time after Barack Obama entered office, and right after Obama’s famous Cairo speech. And there was a domestic aspect: back then, Netanyahu was trying to build a coalition with the center-left. But you can read in my book that the U.S. diplomat, Martin Indyk, understood it was a scam. 

There are different reasons and motivations for why he spoke in favor of dividing the land each time. But as a political historian, my methodology is not only to look at what politicians are saying, but what they are doing. 

How did Netanyahu continue strengthening Hamas when he came back into office in 2009? 

Since coming back to power, Netanyahu has resisted any attempt, be it military or diplomatic, that might bring an end to the Hamas regime in Gaza.

Until 2009, the Israeli army — together with the PA — was trying to eliminate the movement’s power in the occupied territories. Then, Netanyahu gave an order to stop the cooperation between the Israeli military and the PA security forces in their fight against Hamas. All other forms of security coordination continued, but this specific aspect ceased. From then on, Netanyahu enacted a policy of not negotiating with the Palestinians under the pretext that their leadership is divided, while at the same time trying to undermine every attempt at reconciliation talks between Hamas and the PA.

Fast forward to 2018, when PA President Mahmoud Abbas stopped transferring money to Gaza completely, leaving Hamas on the brink of collapse. Instead of letting the PA return to Gaza [after it was kicked out by Hamas in 2006, following elections], Netanyahu saved Hamas by allowing in suitcases full of cash from Qatar. He was actually the mastermind and the architect of this Mafia-style money transfer. 

Did the transfer of Qatari money into Gaza only begin in 2018?

Qatar actually started transferring money to Hamas in 2012, though this was via bank wires and it was very small amounts. This changed fundamentally in 2018, when Netanyahu persuaded his cabinet to approve bigger transfers and change the mechanism of transfer to cash. After that, a car carrying suitcases full of almost $30 million in cash would pass through Rafah Crossing every month from the summer of 2018 until October 2023. 

As far as we know, most of the security establishment was against this move, but it was very important for Netanyahu and he succeeded. The minutes of that cabinet meeting are not and may never be open to the public, but it is clear this was a move designed to weaken the PA.

In your book, you mention a message that Sinwar sent to Netanyahu shortly after the major transfers began. Can you explain what that was?

Israel and Hamas did not communicate with each other officially, but they did engage in secret talks about what Israel calls the “hasdara,” or the arrangement by which Israel allowed Qatari money to flow into Gaza. In 2018, after the suitcases started arriving, the Israeli representative in these talks, the then National Security Adviser Meir Ben-Shabbat, received a Hebrew note from Sinwar addressed to Netanyahu, which was titled “Calculated risk.” 

I remember being amazed to read about it when the note was published in the Israeli media [in 2022]. Why would the head of Hamas write to the Israeli prime minister, and why did he choose these specific words? What is the “risk”? 

It was a very clever thing to write because both Sinwar and Netanyahu took a calculated risk with this agreement [to continue weakening the PA and eliminating the possibility of a negotiated solution]. Netanyahu knew that Hamas was not going to use the money for the welfare of Gaza’s children or for modernizing the Strip, but rather for building tunnels and purchasing weapons, turning Gaza into a Spartan state at war with Israel. Yet still he did it for the sake of eliminating the possibility of a two-state solution. 

The Israeli security establishment repeatedly warned Netanyahu that Hamas was preparing for the next round of fighting. Throughout 2023, he received a number of specific warnings that Hamas was planning to launch an attack on Israel to kill and kidnap people. But nobody, including Netanyahu, thought it would be as big as it was.

In August 2023, when Israelis were demonstrating against the judicial overhaul, Palestinians in Gaza were demonstrating against Hamas. Sinwar was afraid of losing power in Gaza, so Hamas put down these protests with clubs and weapons. Public opinion polls in September and October 2023 in Gaza showed that over 50 percent were in favor of the two-state solution. This means Hamas had failed: despite half of the population in Gaza living most of their lives under its fundamentalist doctrine, the majority remained in favor of dividing the land. 

With the [October 7] attack, Sinwar helped Netanyahu by eliminating any opposition to his rule inside Israel and the possibility of peace talks in the near future. Sinwar knew that Hamas wasn’t going to conquer Israel on October 7; he didn’t think he was starting a war to eliminate the Zionist project. It was a show of force. And he knew what the response would be.

Most Palestinians view Hamas as a resistance movement and an integral part of Palestinian political life, whether or not they personally support it. In your book, you call Hamas the enemy of the Palestinian national movement. Isn’t this a bit patronizing?

I think Hamas is part, maybe even a big part, of the Palestinian national movement. But I think it is the enemy of the segment inside the Palestinian national movement that wants to end the conflict and the occupation.

Even inside Hamas, you find different approaches and views. It is not a monolithic organization. In recent years, there has been a debate over the way the organization should continue its fight and who to align with — Egypt, Iran, Turkey, or Qatar. Sinwar, who was a rational politician, is not synonymous with Hamas, just as Netanyahu is not synonymous with Likud. 

But Sinwar was willing to put the lives of more than 2 million Gazans at risk. He deals in death. There have been quite a lot of quotes from senior Hamas officials explaining that Gazans are expected to shed their blood for the Palestinian cause. When Sinwar said [in 2022] that a good Palestinian is one who grabs a knife and stabs a Jew, he did not believe this was the path to ending the Zionist project. He knew that such actions would make the conflict even more entrenched and permanent. It is clear that Sinwar was an enemy of all who value justice and peace.

In the second part of the book, titled “The Pariah State: On the First Days of the Fighting in Gaza,” you say that Israel’s current onslaught is the continuation of Netanyahu’s policy. Can you elaborate on this? 

I think that in order to understand the war you need to understand its first 20 days. This was the “Dresdenization” of Gaza: an aerial bombing campaign before the ground operation started. 

On the evening of October 7, Netanyahu gave his first speech to the nation, during which he said — using a biblical term — that Israel is going to turn Gaza “into rubble.” The prime minister reportedly told Biden around this time, who expressed reservations, that Israel is going to do what the Americans did in Japan and Germany during World War II, meaning a strategic campaign of bombing entire cities. 

This Dresdenization was something that didn’t serve any political or strategic logic: it didn’t give any thought to the future of relations between the nations. During those first 20 days, Hamas’ fighters and the movement’s leadership were in tunnels underground; Israel’s Air Force bombed thousands of innocent civilians. It did not help Israel gain control of Gaza, and it made it more difficult to free the hostages. It served the logic of revenge, which is the logic of Sinwar and Netanyahu. 

The Dresdenization of Gaza helped Netanyahu. With it, he received the approval of the vast majority of Israeli society, and this is a stain on Jewish-Israeli society. This was a massacre, genocide, a crime against humanity — I don’t think the word is important. And this crime helped Netanyahu eliminate internal opposition. Domestically, Netanyahu’s policy made the Israeli public complicit in the crime. 

And what is Netanyahu’s policy toward Hamas now, after more than a year of war and the killing of Sinwar?

I think Netanyahu’s policy today remains the same as it was before the war. He is trying to strengthen Hamas, or more precisely, the interest that Hamas represents — that is, weakening support for a two-state solution, and keeping us all in a state of endless war. Sinwar and Hamas were not the main issue for him; his central interest is never-ending war, and Hamas was a tool to maintain the conflict while Israel had the upper hand.

Among the Israeli left, especially the Zionist left, many people are now saying that, after October 7, the “conception” [the word used to describe Israel’s policy of keeping Hamas in power while limiting its military capabilities] has been proven a failure. I try to explain that the “conception” worked. I don’t think anything fundamental has changed since October 7; the excel sheets of victims have become much longer, especially among Palestinians, but I don’t think that something fundamental has changed. 

Hamas is an ideology deeply embedded in the region’s social and political landscape. Its politics are driven by the realities on the ground. The rhetoric of “destroying Hamas” and Netanyahu’s claims of achieving “total victory” are just spin for the public. The key question is not how many weapons exist in Gaza — there will always be more — but rather the social and political conditions that prevail there. Not how many Kalashnikov rifles there are, but whether people are willing to use them. 

[After the past year,] we are talking about maybe 20-25 years of reconstruction in Gaza, meaning two generations of children in Gaza will grow up in tents and refugee camps. They will not have the opportunity to learn poetry and computer science; instead, they will struggle for basic survival: food, a warm room, a soft bed. Thousands of children will never feel the embrace of their parents. It’s heartbreaking. These are the conditions that fuel resistance and perpetuate segregation. The recruitment offices of Hamas will remain busier than ever.

I think one of the things both Sinwar and Netanyahu wanted was achieved: support for the two-state solution is at the lowest rates in the history of this conflict on both sides. Now, the question is what will happen in Ramallah: what is the plan of the PA and the PLO? 

How would you characterize the impact of the war on Israeli society?

In the second part of the book, I tried to deal with the question of morality, and what happened to the values of Jewish Israelis. I sought to understand the connection between the strategy of revenge and the strategy of denial.

Since October 7, Israel has been committing multiple war crimes in Gaza, which soldiers are photographing and filming and posting all over social media. I saw the photo of two soldiers who bombed the Central Archives of Gaza City just for fun, which left a mark on me because I spend most of my time in archives. You can see there is a policy of starvation, there is a policy of indiscriminate bombing, there is a policy of torture. 

People know, but they don’t know: this is the strategy of denial. Most Israelis do not read Haaretz or Local Call (+972’s Hebrew-language partner site), but they could go onto social media or visit any international outlet. I was amazed, during the bombing campaign at the start of the war, how people simply closed their eyes. But the denial is very important for us, the “chosen people,” to grant legitimacy to what we are doing in Gaza and what we are not doing for the hostages. 

I think that nearly 60 years of occupation has changed the heart of the average Israeli. Yeshayahu Leibowitz, the Orthodox Jewish intellectual and Hebrew University professor, said as early as 1968 that the occupation is a corrupting force. The occupation has truly corrupted us. 

When World War II ended in 1945, the [concentration] camps opened and the world was exposed to the most brutal form of extermination in history. I think something of this kind will happen when the gates of Gaza are opened. When that happens, the Israeli public will need to decide which road they’re going to take: responsibility or denial. I believe they will choose denial. And this is why I think Netanyahu won the war.