Israel's policy of differentiation from Hamas, which would have cemented the terror group's rule in Gaza as the lesser evil, was not something Benjamin Netanyahu used to boast about or talk about publicly. Over the years, there have even been a sign or two – such as an interview with Time magazine in July 2019 – that indicate that Netanyahu himself has debated how moral or right this is.
The tragedy, it later turned out, was twofold: Qatar, a Hamas-supporting country that maintained ties with other terrorist organizations, maintained and financed the Hamas regime beyond our southern border. Israel, which sought to fight terrorism, gave its consent to this dubious arrangement.
Many saw this as surrender and protection to Hamas. When the funds were delayed, Hamas threatened or fired rockets at Israel. Quiet was bought only intermittently, between rounds, but Netanyahu, who on top of everything, was mistaken and misled into thinking that Hamas was deterred, over the years saw maintaining Hamas as a necessity as the lesser evil. When he spoke about it publicly, he did so in a measured and sparing manner.
Netanyahu's most explicit remarks on the separation policy were made at a meeting of the Likud faction in March 2019: "Whoever wants to thwart the establishment of a Palestinian state must support strengthening Hamas and transferring money to Hamas. This is part of our strategy, to differentiate between the Palestinians in Gaza and the Palestinians in Judea and Samaria."
Much more than that, as surprising as it may sound, there is none. The policy of separation was accompanied by the policy of silence. Netanyahu's inner circle was more generous with explanations.
One of them was the future Minister of Information, who resigned at the outbreak of the war, Galit Distal Atabrian. The forgotten, multi-section post that Distal Atabrian published on Facebook on May 5, 2019, needs to be read carefully. He lays out Netanyahu's worldview at relative length. In paragraph 5, Atabrian wrote:
"It must be said honestly – Netanyahu wants Hamas on its feet, and he is willing to pay an almost unimaginable price for it – half the country is paralyzed. Children and parents are suffering from PTSD, homes are bombed, people are being killed. A cat holds a nuclear tiger in its eggs, and Netanyahu, with a kind of outrageous, almost unimaginable restraint, does not do what is easiest to do – topple this organization with the breath of the IDF.
"The question is: Why? Why?? Why???," to which Distal Atabrian replies: "Every house needs a balcony, and Israel is a home. The balcony of this house is Samaria. From almost every major city in Israel, yes, even from Tel Aviv, you can get to Samaria by spitting. The time a 3-year-old boy from the Rothschild kindergarten will have to reach a safe space when a bomb is thrown at him from Samaria is the same as the time such a child has in the Gaza envelope... A matter of seconds."
And here comes the bottom line, which is a little long: "Mark the following sentence - Benjamin Netanyahu is leaving Hamas on its feet so that the State of Israel will not become the entire Gaza envelope. If Hamas collapses, Abbas may control Gaza. If he controls it, voices from the left will rise up that will encourage political negotiations and a political solution and a Palestinian state in Judea and Samaria as well... This means Kfar Saba, Ramat Hasharon, Modi'in and Tel Aviv – all within 30 seconds of an Iranian missile stationed on Israel's balcony. This is the real reason why Netanyahu is not eliminating the mother of Hamas. Everything else is..."
"We were not wrong"
Netanyahu pulled and pulled the separation policy, until it exploded in his face. Maj. Gen. (res.) Gershon Hacohen, who for years supported Netanyahu's approach to the Hamas-Gaza issue, insists even today: "We were not wrong." According to him, the first to insist on the need for separation between Judea and Samaria was Yitzhak Rabin, "who belatedly realized the significance of the 'safe passage' that the Oslo people 'cooked' for him between Gaza and Judea and Samaria.
"This super-dangerous land connection, in the heart of Israel," Hacohen says, "between Erez Crossing and Tarqumiya, a connection that was not realized due to the security risk, could not be thwarted as long as Hamas did not come to power in Gaza. When that happened, an opportunity arose for us vis-à-vis Obama's United States and Secretary of State John Kerry, who were obsessed with the two-state solution; A solution that would have pushed us to the limits of suffocation and death. Once Hamas took control of Gaza, Netanyahu could have told the U.S. and the Palestinians: It's not two states. It's three countries. He had a case.
Failed Hamas launches in Gaza | IDF Spokesperson
"Netanyahu's problem," Hacohen believes, "was that this strategy was correct until the end of the Obama era. Then, when the pressure for a full-fledged Palestinian state came off us, it was right to reexamine it, and it was not done. Netanyahu," Hacohen argues, "does not understand the basic foundation of strategy. He should have understood that after he initiates the Abraham Accords and stands on the eve of an agreement with the Saudis, he is creating new forces of resistance.
"Every concept is good for the time. A good strategist checks daily whether his strategy is still in effect, and Netanyahu has not done so. On top of that, two other things happened. First, the world has changed. Ukraine's stand against Russia has given the Palestinians a boost of encouragement. From day one, there were calls: 'Let's do what the Ukrainians are doing.' The Iranians have also studied this war in Ukraine well, and have implemented its lessons in their branch in Gaza.
"Secondly, new war capabilities were created, we will call them 'domestic,' and therefore the IDF's advantage was eroding. I've been writing about this for several years: Just as everyone today has a mobile phone, anyone today can buy a drone, a drone, and manufacture rockets and weapons. Everything is available today to everyone. My conclusions about the erosion of the IDF's advantage as a result of this were conveyed to the highest echelons of the army, but there they claimed that it was 'political.' They refused to acknowledge that it was professional."
Forgiveness, but you and many others supported policies that used Qatar — a country linked to terrorist organizations — to maintain a terrorist organization. Doesn't Netanyahu have the resilience and understanding that Hamas must be toppled, as he promised in 2008, and that with pressure to establish a Palestinian state that is dangerous to us, we must deal not in this way?
"Qatar is a logic that says, let's use Satan for our purposes. We didn't realize that Satan was smarter than us."
And what now, after we got it?
"Destroy, kill and lose as much of Hamas-Gaza and their collaborators as possible. If we don't give them another Nakba, they will win. We need to expel the Gazans from their homes, and not let them return."
"We didn't buy quiet"
The separation policy that Netanyahu led, and which defense ministers and chiefs of staff throughout the generations (with the exception of Eisenkot) stood behind, infuriates the man who predicted the war five weeks before it broke out, Colonel (res.) Yigal Carmon, head of the Mamri Institute and advisor on terrorism to two prime ministers, Rabin and Shamir. Carmon, who published his outlook for war at the end of August, published in 2018 materials that were apparently too harsh for the Israeli palate about the real plans behind the "return marches" that Hamas had been holding along the fence for many months.
Today he is furious: "Netanyahu adheres to the policy of separation, which has preserved and strengthened the Hamas regime. He didn't buy it quiet, because it wasn't actually quiet. There were rounds and constant threat. This policy also did not really differentiate itself, because Hamas in Judea and Samaria was also constantly strengthened.
"According to our data," says Carmon, "over the years, the Qataris transferred a billion and a half shekels to Hamas, with our consent. Only a tiny fraction went to the citizens. Most of it was used by Hamas to build tunnels, develop its rocket system, and build the 'metro,' the lower city."
Didn't the money come from Iran?
"Nope. This is the dumb Qatar-Israel axis. Iran only trained and coordinated, but did not fund. They have no money. They have been under harsh sanctions for years. Qatar's money went to military purposes, sometimes in suitcases, and sometimes through various associations and associations. This no-man's-land government has deluded itself into believing that Hamas is deterred, that it is important for it to maintain its rule and benefit the population.
"We gradually brought in thousands of workers here – first the Bennett and Lapid governments, and then Netanyahu – thousands of workers. We reached 15,20 to 7,<> Gazans a day. Now you will understand: these workers are Hamas members. No one went to work without a Hamas permit. Hamas takes part of their salary. These workers, now known, were spies. That's how they built the target files for the communities and the southern area that was attacked on <> October. The innocent settlements in the south also participated in this fool's paradise. My heart aches for them. They enjoyed cheap labor, and never imagined that they were hosting those who provided information to their executioners."
Is Qatar a state sponsor of terrorism?
"Of course. We've written about it hundreds of times here at Memri. It has supported or maintained ties with the Islamist terrorist organizations the Muslim Brotherhood, al-Qaeda, the Taliban, ISIS. Trials are underway against Qatar in Europe and the United States, and people affected are filing civil lawsuits against it.
"Presidents Clinton and Bush had an intelligence adviser named Richard Clark. He said that the main perpetrator of the September 11 attacks, Khaled Sheikh Mohammed, had previously initiated two failed attempted attacks. The first - to shoot down 11 US planes over the Pacific Ocean, and the second - to assassinate the Pope during his visit to Manila. After these two attempts, he fled to Qatar. Clark says that's when the FBI came to arrest him. They only reported it to the leader of Qatar, personally, and what do you think happened? The gentleman disappeared, and reappeared five years later as the main organizer of the September 11 events. This is Qatar."
The government, the army, intelligence, the Mossad, the Shin Bet – don't know who Qatar is?
"I have no doubt that they know, but someone has taken it upon themselves to disregard this information. We fell in love with the slogan of an 'arrangement' vis-à-vis Hamas. In Memri, we explained exactly five years ago where the 'return marches' were going near the fence."
"The Fence Cutters" and the "Break-In Unit"
I look at the reports from 2018 that Carmon presents to me. They are detailed. The bottom line written there is this: "An examination of the statements in Gaza by senior Hamas figures, the organizers of the 'return march,' its participants and supporters, reveals that the march was not a purely civilian popular event, but rather a Hamas-supported move intended to breach the border fence with Israel and advance towards communities within the State of Israel... Throughout the campaign," Mamri researchers noted at the time, "maps and aerial photographs were published on social networks showing the road and space from various places in the Gaza Strip towards the communities near the Gaza Strip..."
One of the Hamas posts quoted by Memri's report stated, among other things: "... As soon as thousands cross the border and flock to Israel, bulldozers have to come and remove the barbed wire fence." The links that Miri attached to the document refer to many videos, one of them of members of the "fence cutters" unit. Another video by the "burglary unit" shows masked and masked youths wearing masks riding motorcycles toward the fence and cutting it with locomotives.
Did you present your materials to Modiin?
"It's all materials that were visible to them as well, but they showed a fixation. The prevailing opinion was that it was nothing. It was a crime – I have no other word to define it – to deny and ignore and belittle what Hamas itself published. It concerns the lack of a basic understanding of our situation vis-à-vis Hamas, vis-à-vis the Palestinians."
What did they lack in order to reach that basic understanding?
"They lacked the willingness, and perhaps still lack today, to recognize that part of the Arab world has not come to terms with our existence; Parts of it are preparing to fight us. Oslo blew up in our faces, and now so does the 'ingenious' policy of segregation of financing a terrorist organization through a terrorist state."
Is Qatar a terrorist state?
"Qatar is the head of the snake. She is the disaster. Cooperation with it is to tango with terror. Qatar is home to Al Jazeera's incitement channel. In London there is another network – Al Arabi, owned by our informant Azmi Bishara. She, too, has reporters in Israel. This is mobilized enemy communication. It broadcasts messages from Hamas' military commanders. On the first day of the war, both networks broadcast Mohammed Deif's opening speech. At that moment, we had to shut them both down permanently and expel their people from here. By the way, Al Jazeera, despite the talk, hasn't been shut down yet, they just said they would."
Carmon now believes, unlike some of his colleagues, that Gaza's aerial pounding should continue, even for months, and that ground incursions should be avoided. We don't know what's waiting for us there, he says: "We also bid, we also pumped money, and now we're going to put the soldiers in the underground 'metro' built with this money?"
He calls on the government to take two steps at the same time: "To publicly announce to the families of the abductees, to the countries of the world and to all international organizations, that Israel is willing to release all Hamas terrorists to the last of them, in exchange for all the abductees. This is our bargaining chip. For such an hour we kept them with us. This is not a ruler's deal of one for 1,000. This is the redemption of more than 200 abductees, many of them civilians. We will deal with the murderous terrorists later, and we have the ability to deal with them, as long as we are determined, and do not act with them as we did with the Sinwar gang that was released in the Gilad Shalit deal.
"If, after such an announcement, Hamas refuses, and it is quite possible that it refuses, Gaza must be turned into a wave of ruins. To leave its residents for years as refugees in tents. At the same time, there is no need to repeat the openings of Qatar's rulers to mediate, but we need to exert massive pressure on Qatar in the style that our intelligence apparatuses know how to exert, in order to turn it into a country devoid of foreigners, thereby bringing an end to it, and then we will see that the abductees will all return."
"They were all babysitters"
Carmon has been an "outsider" for many years, a true professional in his field – terrorism and the Arab world – but one to whom the system does not listen. Perhaps now it is worth listening to at least some of his advice. A few weeks ago, he proved, and not for the first time, that he knew what he was talking about when he published a forecast of war in September and October.
Netanyahu has responsibility for the concept and its results. He is her father who gives birth and preserves. But to be fair, it should be noted that behind the separation policy, whether as an orderly worldview or in complementarity, almost the entire political and military leadership of Israel, right and left, stood up, as did most of the media. Almost all of them backed him when he refrained from crushing Hamas in a ground operation, and downplayed the Hamas threat. No one – not even Carmon – foresaw a danger of such magnitude, cruelty and magnitude.
Former minister Haim Ramon, who backed Netanyahu on many of his legal issues, called on the prime minister this week to retire to his home, but also fairly noted that in the Hamas context, "the entire political system was 'Bibist,' because since 2009 all political leaders, in the coalition and in the opposition, have embraced the concept of coexistence and wholeheartedly supported it," including Ya'alon and Barak, who, he said, are "now fleeing from their great responsibility to strengthen Hamas."
After the disengagement and the Shalit deal, it therefore appears that Netanyahu's policy of separation and the concept of preserving Hamas, which was backed by many, is the third side of the triangle that made a decisive contribution to the infrastructure of evil and to the rapid growth of Hamas-Gaza until the October 7 massacre.
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