Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s policy of allowing Qatar to transfer funds to Hamas was a poor foreign policy decision, US Special Envoy to Monitor and Combat Anti-Semitism Deborah Lipstadt said during a Council on Foreign Relations event.
“I don’t think that Bibi Netanyahu funded Hamas… he did let Qatar transfer quite exceptional amounts of money to them, on the supposition — now proven entirely wrong — that this was a way of sort of redirecting Hamas away from its terrorism to other activities,” Lipstadt said on Wednesday. “I think that that was, as now is obvious… a very bad foreign policy decision.”
The policy was also intended to divide Palestinian groups to prevent the formation of a Palestinian state, Lipstadt said. Many Israelis criticized the policy for preventing a long-term solution to the Israel-Palestine challenge, Lipstadt added.
However, criticism of Netanyahu and his policies should not be used to explain Hamas’ actions, Lipstadt said.
On October 7, Hamas launched a large-scale attack against Israel, sparking an Israeli military operation in the Gaza Strip. The conflict has left thousands of Israelis and Palestinians dead, injured or displaced, as well as fueled broader tensions in the Middle East.