Netanyahu was warned twice that Qatari cash was funding Hamas military wing – reports
According to accounts denied by PM’s office, ex-Shin Bet chief, IDF told premier in 2019-2020 that terror chief Muhammad Deif was seizing millions from monthly payments
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was warned at least twice before the Hamas onslaught of October 7, 2023, that the terror group’s military chief Muhammad Deif was appropriating funds provided by Qatar to Gaza with the premier’s approval, Hebrew media reported Tuesday.
According to near-identical reports by Channel 12 and the Kan public broadcaster, Netanyahu was warned in 2019 by then-Shin Bet chief Nadav Argaman, and again in 2020 by the IDF’s Military Intelligence Directorate.
Channel 12 cited three security sources as confirming both warnings’ existence. Netanyahu’s office, where top staffers are under investigation for alleged ties to Qatar, denied the reports.
According to the reports, Argaman warned Netanyahu in mid-2019 — less than a year after the monthly payments from Qatar began — that Deif, whom Israel killed in an airstrike last July, was seizing millions of dollars from the Qatari funds.
Kan reported that Argaman wrote Netanyahu saying the Shin Bet had “identified that funds flowing from Qatar to Gaza have been diverted to Hamas’s military wing.” Netanyahu was said to reply, “I’ve heard, we’ll continue the process,” or words to that effect.
Argaman was interrogated by police last week after Netanyahu accused him of blackmail for threatening in an interview to release compromising information about Netanyahu should the premier break the law. In the interview, Argaman accused Netanyahu of ignoring his warnings about the Qatari funds.
Argaman’s 2019 warning was reportedly seconded months later by an assessment from the Military Intelligence Directorate that Deif was siphoning off $4 million of the Qatari funds each month.
According to Channel 12, in a security consultation following the military intelligence warning, it was resolved to “manufacture some kind of crisis with Qatar.” Then-Mossad chief Yossi Cohen was sent to confront Qatar’s emir with the intelligence about Deif, Channel 12 said.
The emir reportedly pleaded ignorance about the siphoning off of the funds, and assured Cohen that Qatari money would not go to Hamas’s military wing.
Responding to Kan and Channel 12, Netanyahu’s office denied ever receiving a warning that the Qatari money was being used for terrorist activity.
“No intelligence document has ever been placed on the prime minister’s desk determining that funds from the Qatari stipend were being transferred to terrorism,” the premier’s office said in a statement.
“On the contrary, security agencies consistently determined that the Qatari stipend funds were transferred directly to fuel [payments], needy families and and salaries for government workers,” read the statement.
Regarding the $4 million figure said to have been cited in the military intelligence warning, the statement said: “The prime minister was notified that starting in March 2020, Hamas was diverting $4 million from its civilian budget, which came from other sources, and not from the Qatari stipend.”
The statement did not specify which “other sources” funded Hamas’s civilian budget.
From 2018, Qatar provided dozens of millions of dollars in cash to Gaza on a monthly basis. The payments were publicly encouraged by Netanyahu as a means to prevent a humanitarian disaster in the Strip.
The payments came under renewed scrutiny after the war in Gaza was sparked on October 7, 2023, when thousands of Hamas-led terrorists stormed southern Israel to kill some 1,200 people and take 251 hostages.
Amid the war, Qatar, along with Egypt and the United States, has served as a mediator in ceasefire-hostage talks between Israel and Hamas.
Jacob Magid contributed to this report.
The Times of Israel Community.