Report: PM approved multimillion dollar deals between top Israeli defense companies and Qatar

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has approved multimillion dollar defense deals between Israel’s top defense companies and Qatar, according to the Walla news outlet.

The report comes a day after the publication of documents seized by Israel in Gaza that show Qatar’s intense collaboration with Hamas over the course of several years.

Elbit, Rafael, and Israel Aerospace Industries all received authorization for major deals with the wealthy Gulf country.

According to the report, Elbit agreed to deals with Qatar worth more than $100 million; Rafael inked contracts worth tens of millions of dollars; and IAI executives visited Doha more than 20 times and held a daylong meeting with a high-level Qatari delegation at its headquarters in Israel.

The deals were given the green light by Netanyahu, the Defense Ministry, and the IDF.

Earlier this week, Channel 12 news reported that documents taken from Gaza during the war reveal that in May 2021, immediately after the conclusion of an 11-day conflict between Israel and Hamas, then-Hamas politburo leader Ismail Haniyeh told the terror group’s leader in Gaza Yahya Sinwar that Qatari emir Tamim bin Hamad bin Khalifa Al Thani had privately “agreed on discreet financial support” for the group’s “resistance” efforts.

In addition to Doha’s cash, Qatari intelligence officials reportedly met with a Hamas representative at one point — the report did not provide a date — to discuss supervising special training units for Hamas fighters on military bases in Qatar and Turkey, and for the integration of Syrian Palestinians who fled to Lebanon amid the Syrian civil war into Hamas’s Lebanese battalions.

The Prime Minister’s Office does not respond to The Times of Israel’s request for comment on the Walla report.

“Elbit Systems’ activity in the international market is subject to the guidelines and restrictions of the Israeli Ministry of Defense, and accordingly, the company operates under these guidelines,” Elbit says.

“Rafael does not provide information about business partners,” the company tells Walla. “Rafael has operated and operates according to the most stringent international standards, with regard to the compliance of its business partners and in accordance with the Export Control and Licensing Law.”