A: The basic idea behind these payments, facilitated via Qatar, sometimes very directly with Israeli support, was to prop up the Hamas government. Netanyahu has said as much, not in public - he doesn't openly admit this, he in fact denies it - but in reports of comments he's made privately, that the basic idea here was you need to keep the Palestinians divided... between the Palestinian Authority, which governs the West Bank, and Hamas, which has governed Gaza since 2007. Now why do you do that? In his mind it's very simple: because Hamas is - or thought to be prior to October 7th - more responsible than other militant Palestinian factions in Gaza and second, and more importantly, because when the Palestinians are divided, there's very little pressure on Israel to make any final two-state agreement... because there's no one to agree with. There's no unified Palestinian political structure. And so from the hard-line Israeli point of view, Netanyahu's point of view, "This is perfect. This is ideal. We can keep doing whatever we want and we don't have to worry about the pesky international community as long as there are these violent fanatics in charge of Gaza."
So it was sort of a win-win from his point of view prior to October 7th, which changed everything because it joked this entire conversation that Israel could buy a certain kind of quiet from Hamas by quietly supporting them on the security front just was wrong, entirely wrong.
~ Zack Beauchamp, senior correspondent, Vox, "Behind Bibi Netanyahu's FAILED PLAN To BUY PEACE By Propping Up HAMAS," The Hill, 1:00 mark, December 11, 2023
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