The Not-so-Secret History of Netanyahu's Support For Hamas

Ghousoon Bisharat | +972 Magazine

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. 

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, who also works as a researcher at the Akevot Institute for Israeli-Palestinian Conflict Research, Netanyahu's priority is not maintaining Israel's security but rather preventing any real chance of resolving the 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.

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.

Read more

Israel is trying to collapse the Palestinian Authority. The first step is destroying the Palestinian economy.

Mondoweiss | Qassam Muaddi 

As countries around the world recognize a Palestinian state, Israel is doing everything it can to prevent the possibility of any future state. One way it plans on doing that is through financial strangulation.

Following the wave of global recognitions of the State of Palestine from key Western and European nations, Israel has been stepping up its plans to render these gestures moot by implementing measures meant to cripple and delegitimize the Palestinian Authority (PA).

Earlier this month, Israel approved a massive settlement plan that would split the West Bank in two. Since October 7, 2023, it has plunged the PA into an economic crisis by withholding nearly 7 billion shekels (around $2 billion) in Palestinian customs money. And in recent months, the Israeli army has launched repeated invasions into the heart of Palestinian cities in the West Bank, ostensibly under PA control.

But Israel still hasn't used its most important trump card in responding to the recent Western and global recognitions of a Palestinian state. It involves a piece of paper, and the person holding it is Israel's hardline Finance Minister, Bezalel Smotrich.

Every year, the Finance Minister renews an indemnity letter allowing Israeli banks to accept money transfers from Palestinians in the West Bank, shielding Israeli banks from anti-terrorism laws they might be at risk of breaking by dealing with Palestinian banks. Smotrich has repeatedly threatened to revoke this letter in response to global sanctions against hardline Ministers like himself and Itamar Ben-Gvir, which could cause the collapse of the Palestinian banking sector — and possibly, the Palestinian Authority. Smotrich has recently been periodically renewing the letter in four-month stretches, using the intervals as pressure points to threaten the PA.

This is the spearhead of Israel's campaign of economic warfare against Palestinians in the West Bank. Here's why it could hasten the collapse of the PA and formally bring about a one-state apartheid reality. 

Read more 

Jailed for calling the Palestinian Authority rotten

Budour Youssef Hassan

Electronic Intifada

Kifah Quzmar was at a café in downtown Ramallah when a few men followed him to the toilet. After grabbing him, they dragged him out to a car with a yellow Israeli license plate.

The men, it soon transpired, were undercover police working for the Palestinian Authority. They apprehended Quzmar at the West Bank café on 11 May because of comments he had made on Facebook.

Following the arrest of his friend Seif al-Idrissi by PA forces in April, Kifah wrote on the social media website: “Do you know why the mukhabarat [PA intelligence service] is a rotten agency? Because the entire PA is rotten.”

According to his brother, Anan, this is not the first time that Kifah had been arrested because of something he wrote on Facebook. “They interrogated him a couple of years ago for a joke mocking the PA which he wrote during a snowstorm,” Anan said.

Kifah was released on bail one week after his arrest this month. His lawyer, Anas al-Barghouti, said Kifah could face charges of insulting the PA. No charges have yet been issued.

Kifah is a business student at Birzeit University in the occupied West Bank. He is also a member of the Democratic Progressive Student Pole, the largest left-wing organization in the university.

Read more