Israeli policy towards Hamas
Benjamin Netanyahu had been Israel's prime minister for most of the two decades preceding the
2023 Israel–Hamas war, and was criticized for having championed a policy of empowering Hamas in Gaza.
[585][586][587][588] This policy was part of a strategy to sabotage a two-state solution by confining the Palestinian Authority to the West Bank and weakening it, and to demonstrate to the Israeli public and western governments that Israel has no partner for peace.[589]
This
criticism was leveled by several Israeli officials,
including former prime minister Ehud Barak, and former head of Shin Bet security services Yuval Diskin.[589] Saudi Arabia and the Palestinian Authority were also critical of Israel under Netanyahu allowing suitcases of Qatari money to be given to Hamas,
[589] in exchange for maintaining the ceasefire.
[585] The
Times of Israel reported after the Hamas attack that Netanyahu's policy to treat the Palestinian Authority as a burden and Hamas as an asset had "blown up in our faces".
[585]
In 2019, Benjamin Netanyahu said at a meeting of his
Likud party:
"Anyone who wants to thwart the establishment of a Palestinian state has to support bolstering Hamas and transferring money to Hamas. This is part of our strategy — to isolate the Palestinians in Gaza from the Palestinians in the West Bank."[590]
In 2017, the PA government imposed its own sanctions against Gaza, including, among other things, cutting off salaries to thousands of PA employees, as well as financial assistance to hundreds of families in the Gaza Strip. The PA initially said it would stop paying for the electricity and fuel that Israel supplies to the Gaza Strip, but after a year partially backtracked.
[393] The Israeli government has allowed millions of dollars from Qatar to be funneled on a regular basis through Israel to Hamas, to replace the millions of dollars the PA had stopped transferring to Hamas. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu explained that letting the money go through Israel meant that it could not be used for terrorism, saying: "Now that we are supervising, we know it's going to humanitarian causes."[394]
Well that's quite a story. I was introduced to it listening to Charlie Rose interview Ehud Barak recently. Makes Bibi look like James Bond on steroids and meth and fentanyl. Quite a story given that Mohammed's Mediaeval Time-Traveling Tunnel Rats have been firing so many shitty sugar rockets, for so many years, that every single house has a bomb shelter and everyone has a warning system in case an Iron Dome is not perfect. So Bibi was letting money launder through Israel to Mohammed's Mediaeval Time-Traveling Tunnel Rats just to maintain this kind of status quo? Just to avoid having to negotiate a two-state solution?
All i can say is that it is now popular to conflate Trump and Bibi together on the same level of criminal corruption. All i can say is if Bibi is the same as Trump, then i consider him the victim of an internal political war that is becoming nastier and nastier and is probably not as guilty as one side says he is.
The story still doesn't explain how anyone, including Bibi, is/was supposed to stop Mohammed's Mediaeval Time-Traveling Tunnel Rats from becoming a dictatorship that doesn't allow elections let alone competing parties. Doesn't explain how they came to power in the first place, with Bibi's help.
By the way, who was responsible for reducing armament amongst the settlements? Who was responsible for their bomb shelters not having a locking mechanism to keep out infiltrators inside their homes...because they just expected the status quo of shitty sugar rockets to stay the same? So people had to stand there, holding the handle of their safe rooms, while infiltrators shot through the door.
Possibly Israel was weakened, and made vulnerable by internal politics, just as the US is being weakened, and being made vulnerable by internal politics.
But yah, Oct 7 is indeed suspicious, given what is known about Israel's normal state of alertness to border activity. In one story, a military reservist was able to drive his car all the way from north Israel down to Kibbutz Berri in time to actually have an effect on the battle there.
Personally, i don't think there is a two state solution like Ehud Barak does. But during this time, there was indeed an opportunity for a three state solution, one under Israel, one under the dictator Abbas, and another under the dictators of Mohammed's Mediaeval Time-Traveling Tunnel Rats. What's wrong with a three state solution when the distance between West Bank and Gaza is separated with a ridiculous number of miles in between? I think all this talk about two-state is driving people crazy.
Anyway, for some years, we witnessed a three-state solution, DE FACTO. And we have now seen how that works out.
