Netanyahu Boasts of Bombing Qatar, Defends Israeli-Approved Qatari Funds to Gaza as Humanitarian Aid
By Shahnoor Saqib — SCN NEWS
JERUSALEM — Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has openly defended Israel's bombing of Qatar while simultaneously rejecting accusations that Qatari money his governments helped facilitate into Gaza strengthened Hamas, bringing two of the most contentious elements of his pre- and post-October 7 record together weeks before Israelis vote in a general election. Speaking in an interview with Israel's i24NEWS shared on Saturday, Netanyahu described Qatar as a hostile state and said he had attacked and bombed it during the Gaza war, referring to Israel's September 9, 2025 strike in Doha. In the same interview, he defended millions of dollars in Qatari transfers to Gaza, saying the money was intended for humanitarian purposes and that the policy had been recommended by Israeli security agencies including Mossad and Shin Bet.
The remarks revive a politically damaging argument over Israel's relationship with Qatar and the policies that preceded the Hamas-led October 7, 2023 attack. Critics of Netanyahu have long accused his governments of allowing Qatari money into Gaza as part of a strategy that tolerated Hamas rule while seeking relative calm along Israel's southern border. Netanyahu rejects the contention that his policy amounted to financing Hamas and told i24NEWS that the Qatari money represented only about 2% of all funds entering Gaza, maintaining that its purpose was humanitarian rather than military.
Israel's involvement in the transfers is not itself seriously disputed. Qatar had provided assistance to Gaza for years, but under Netanyahu's government Israel became directly involved in facilitating substantial transfers, including a controversial system beginning in 2018 in which Qatari cash entered Gaza through Israeli-controlled crossings. The money was presented as financing humanitarian assistance, fuel and salaries, while Israeli policymakers viewed economic support as one way of reducing instability and preventing renewed confrontation with Hamas. After Naftali Bennett replaced Netanyahu as prime minister in 2021, the cash-suitcase mechanism was ended and Qatari assistance continued through alternative arrangements.
Netanyahu's latest defence adds an important institutional dimension because he said the transfers were recommended by Mossad and Shin Bet, Israel's external and domestic intelligence agencies. That argument effectively portrays the policy not as a unilateral political concession to Qatar or Hamas but as a security-backed attempt to prevent humanitarian deterioration in Gaza. It also spreads responsibility for one of the most controversial elements of Israel's pre-October 7 Gaza strategy across the country's security establishment at a time when political and intelligence leaders continue to dispute responsibility for the failures that preceded the attack.
Questions nevertheless remain over whether money intended for civilian purposes indirectly strengthened Hamas by freeing other resources for its military and governing apparatus. A 2024 TIME fact-check of Netanyahu's earlier defence of the policy found that more than $1 billion in Qatari money flowed into Gaza over a period spanning several years, with funds designated for purposes including humanitarian assistance, fuel and government salaries. The fact-check noted that the extent to which money may ultimately have been diverted to Hamas's military infrastructure was unclear, illustrating why the controversy cannot accurately be reduced either to a proven claim that all Qatari aid financed Hamas or to an assumption that humanitarian designation alone resolved the question of its broader economic effect.
Qatar has consistently denied financing Hamas's military or political operations through the aid programme. Doha says its assistance was delivered with the knowledge, approval and supervision of Israeli governments and security agencies, with later mechanisms involving international bodies including the World Food Programme and UNOPS. In a formal statement last year responding to Israeli allegations, Qatar said assistance to families was transferred through programmes approved by Israel and that Qatari-funded fuel entered Gaza through coordinated mechanisms, rejecting accusations that the aid had been delivered to Hamas's political or military wings.
The controversy has become more striking because Israel's relationship with Qatar changed dramatically after October 7. Doha remained a central mediator between Israel and Hamas, helping facilitate indirect negotiations over hostages and ceasefire arrangements, while simultaneously hosting Hamas's political office. Netanyahu increasingly accused Qatar of maintaining leverage over Hamas without applying sufficient pressure, culminating in Israel's September 9, 2025 strike in Doha against senior Hamas figures meeting to discuss a U.S.-backed ceasefire proposal.
That operation represented an extraordinary escalation because Qatar is a close U.S. partner and had served as one of the principal intermediaries in Gaza negotiations. The attack killed five Hamas members and a Qatari security officer, according to reporting at the time, while the senior Hamas figures targeted survived. Qatar condemned the strike as a violation of its sovereignty, and U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres described it as a flagrant violation of Qatar's sovereignty and territorial integrity. Regional governments including Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Jordan, Iran and Pakistan also condemned the attack or demonstrated solidarity with Doha.
The diplomatic fallout eventually produced an unusual episode at the White House. Later that month, during Netanyahu's meeting with U.S. President Donald Trump, the Israeli prime minister and Trump telephoned Qatari Prime Minister Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al Thani, with Netanyahu apologising for the strike. The sequence makes Netanyahu's latest rhetoric politically significant: nearly a year after that apology, he is now publicly emphasizing that Israel attacked Qatar and presenting the operation as evidence that Doha never controlled Israeli decision-making.
Netanyahu's argument therefore contains two positions that are individually defensible within his government's security narrative but politically difficult to reconcile. He maintains that Qatar was sufficiently hostile and connected to Hamas to justify an Israeli strike on its territory, while also arguing that earlier Israeli governments were justified in facilitating Qatari money into Gaza because those transfers served humanitarian and security objectives. The distinction Netanyahu draws is that cooperation over civilian assistance did not mean Qatar dictated Israeli policy, and that Israel remained prepared to use military force when it believed Hamas leaders operating from Qatari territory posed a threat.
For Netanyahu's critics, however, the central question is not simply whether the funds were officially labelled humanitarian. Their argument concerns the strategic assumptions underlying Israel's Gaza policy before October 7: whether maintaining economic flows into Hamas-governed Gaza helped preserve an adversary that Israel simultaneously believed could be contained. Netanyahu has previously rejected accusations that his governments deliberately built up Hamas, while reporting and retrospective investigations have continued to scrutinize the Israeli decision-making that allowed Qatari funds to enter the territory.
The issue has acquired additional importance because Israel is heading toward an October 27 general election, the first national vote since the Gaza war began in 2023. Netanyahu faces political pressure over the October 7 security failure, the conduct and aftermath of the Gaza war, economic conditions and Israel's broader regional conflicts. His decision to confront the Qatar controversy directly suggests he is attempting to define the record himself: presenting the prewar transfers as a security-establishment-backed humanitarian policy while portraying the later Doha strike as proof that his government was willing to act militarily against Qatar when Israeli interests demanded it.
That distinction will be central to how the argument is judged. Evidence confirms that Israel approved and facilitated Qatari assistance entering Gaza, and Netanyahu now explicitly says Mossad and Shin Bet supported the policy. What remains contested is whether that strategy merely alleviated civilian hardship and bought temporary stability or whether, regardless of the money's designated purpose, it contributed to an economic environment in which Hamas could devote other resources to building its military capabilities.
Netanyahu's latest comments consequently expose a deeper contradiction in Israel's long relationship with Qatar. Doha was simultaneously a financier of humanitarian assistance to Gaza, a host of Hamas's political leadership, a mediator Israel relied upon for negotiations and eventually the territory of a military strike ordered by Israel. Netanyahu's defence is that those apparently conflicting relationships were pragmatic responses to different security requirements; his opponents see them instead as evidence of a Gaza strategy whose contradictions became impossible to ignore after October 7.
With the Israeli election approaching, the dispute is no longer merely historical. Netanyahu is asking voters to accept that facilitating Qatari money into Gaza and later bombing Hamas leaders in Qatar were not contradictory policies but different stages of the same security strategy. Whether Israelis accept that explanation could become part of a broader judgment on one of the most consequential questions of Netanyahu's premiership: what Israel believed it was buying with years of controlled economic relief for Gaza, and whether that calculation ultimately made the country safer.