Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu has been accused of ignoring repeated warnings that Qatari money, potentially including grants provided by Israel, was heavily funding Hamas in the build-up to October 7.
The investigation by Israeli newspaper Yedioth Ahronoth cited internal intelligence documents and testimony from senior officials, which claimed that Netanyahu was informed several times that funds entering Gaza with Israeli approval, officially for humanitarian purposes, were being diverted to Hamas’ armed wing.
According to the report, a senior Military Intelligence officer told the State Comptroller that Hamas was diverting around $4million a month from Qatari funds to its Al-Qassam Brigades between at least 2019 and 2021.
The officer estimated the military wing’s annual budget at between $70 million and $100 million, meaning the diverted Qatari money accounted for about half of its funding. A separate Military Intelligence document reportedly put the figure at 40 per cent.
The report also alleged that Israeli intelligence discovered a separate, covert funding route from Qatari sources directly to Hamas’s military wing, distinct from the funds Israel had authorised to enter Gaza.
The classified channel was given the pseudonym “Panther’s Eye” by Yedioth.
One senior Military Intelligence officer reportedly alleged that, in addition to then-Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar’s diversion of Qatari money, “there is a covert funding channel from Qatar – and it goes directly to the military wing”.
One former senior intelligence official told Yedioth: “There is nothing that we knew about this issue that we did not immediately share with the prime minister.”
The investigation said Netanyahu was informed at least twice that Qatari money was reaching Hamas’s military wing: once in 2019 by then-Shin Bet chief Nadav Argaman and again in 2020 by the IDF’s Military Intelligence Directorate.
Egypt had also reportedly warned Netanyahu in 2018 that money from Qatar, Turkey and Iran was reaching Hamas’s military wing rather than being used solely for civilian purposes
Netanyahu’s office rejected the allegations as “a collection of recycled lies that have already been disproven in the past” and maintained his position that security officials supported the continuation of the grant funding as it was, to their knowledge, used for humanitarian projects.
Netanyahu recently told i24NEWS that the money Israel allowed into Gaza amounted to just “two per cent of all the money that entered the Strip”.
Qatar has also categorically denied funding Hamas. Its International Media Office said it had “never provided money to Hamas”, arguing that assistance was delivered to Palestinian civilians through mechanisms coordinated with Israel and international organisations.
“Any funding that may have reached Hamas outside these mechanisms had nothing to do with Qatar,” the IMO said, accusing Israeli political figures of attempting to make the Gulf state “a convenient scapegoat” ahead of Israel’s election.
Nonetheless, the report has prompted renewed calls for an independent commission of inquiry into the failures surrounding October 7.
Gadi Eisenkot, chairman of the Yashar party and one of Netanyahu’s principal political rivals, said: “The fact that almost three years after the worst disaster the country has ever known, new scandals and revelations are still emerging every day about the warnings Netanyahu received and his conduct before October 7, is a failure in itself.
“There is no doubt about one thing: Netanyahu abandoned Israel’s security in the months before the massacre and ignored every warning sign and red flag.
“Through his conduct, he led Israel to the worst disaster in its history.”
B’Yachad chairman and former Prime Minister Naftali Bennett described the investigation as “further proof of what Netanyahu is fighting to conceal – he bears personal and direct responsibility for the October 7 massacre”.
And Yair Golan, chairman of the Democrats, also accused Netanyahu of maintaining the policy despite warnings.
“The materials revealed this morning in Yedioth Ahronoth will lead any state commission of inquiry to one clear conclusion: Netanyahu served as Hamas’s financier, and he stuck to this policy even though he knew it was harming security and posing an immediate danger to the lives of Israeli citizens,” he said.
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