A few weeks ago, news broke that two senior Israeli defense officials had visited Qatar, the major source of funding for Hamas as well as for many other Muslim Brotherhood-linked organizations. Most likely, they came to discuss a continuation of the status quo, in which Israel has allowed the emirate to keep the Gaza Strip from economic collapse while ensuring Hamas’s continued rule there—in exchange for Qatari pressure on the terrorist group to engage in less terrorism. Udi Levi comments:
Israel is not the first country in the world to adopt a policy of payment of bribes in return for quiet from a terrorist organization. It was Saudi Arabia that, for over four decades, financed the infrastructures of the Muslim Brotherhood and the Sunni terrorist organizations around the world. The purpose was clear: propagating Islam and placing Saudi Arabia at the head of the Islamic League, while obtaining an assurance that the kingdom would not be harmed, in return for billions of dollars that were injected into terror infrastructures and the dissemination of radical Islam worldwide.
The outcome was deadly and destructive, since it turned radical Islam into the most substantial threat to the free world and led to mega-terror attacks by Osama bin Laden, who then also marked the Saudi kingdom as a key target. Bin Laden, the Saudi kingdom’s own creation, almost fomented a revolution in Saudi Arabia in 2003.
But no less grave is the role Israel now assigns to Qatar vis-à-vis Hamas in Gaza. . . . Israel should reconsider the wisdom of its current approach to Qatar and the Gaza Strip. [It] also needs to give serious consideration to the following question: what are the implications of the payments to Hamas for Israel’s confrontation with Hizballah in Lebanon? The pressures on Hizballah grow every day, from the U.S. government and other actors. What if Hizballah seeks a similar arrangement of quiet with Israel in exchange for cash? How would Israel respond then? Ask the Qataris to hush Hizballah with money?
Read more on Jerusalem Institute for Strategy and Security: https://jiss.org.il/en/levi-qatari-cash-for-hamas-will-backfire-on-israel/