SS: What makes this investigation particularly significant isn’t simply the scale of Qatari funding to Gaza, but the documentary evidence showing how successive Israeli governments actively encouraged and managed it while publicly criticising Qatar for financing Hamas.
The correspondence obtained by TIME raises serious questions about the relationship between humanitarian assistance, Israeli security policy and the political advantages of keeping Palestinian leadership divided.
It’s important to distinguish humanitarian funding from direct financing of Hamas’s military operations, which these documents do not establish. Nevertheless, the apparent contradiction between Israel’s public position and its private dealings deserves far greater scrutiny.
The question now is whether this was simply a disastrously misjudged security policy, or whether the political benefits of maintaining the status quo were allowed to outweigh the risks.
> The correspondence obtained by TIME raises serious questions about the relationship between humanitarian assistance, Israeli security policy and the political advantages of keeping Palestinian leadership divided.
These questions were already raised a long time ago, but unfortunately, US media has never had a material interest in informing the public.
Just for example, even the "withdrawal" of the State of Israel from Gaza in 2005 was no such thing. The State of Israel continued to control everything about Gaza, and has ever since. The whole point was to starve the Palestinian population of political options, which when combined with a policy of "mowing the grass," and of literally starving the population, was to prevent peace, and prevent "solutions" completely, one state, two state, anything.
In their own words:
Ehud Olmert, deputy leader under Sharon:
> There is no doubt in my mind that very soon the government of Israel is going to have to address the demographic issue with the utmost seriousness and resolve. This issue above all others will dictate the solution that we must adopt. In the absence of a negotiated agreement – and I do not believe in the realistic prospect of an agreement – we need to implement a unilateral alternative... More and more Palestinians are uninterested in a negotiated, two-state solution, because they want to change the essence of the conflict from an Algerian paradigm to a South African one. From a struggle against 'occupation,' in their parlance, to a struggle for one-man-one-vote. That is, of course, a much cleaner struggle, a much more popular struggle – and ultimately a much more powerful one. For us, it would mean the end of the Jewish state... the parameters of a unilateral solution are: To maximize the number of Jews; to minimize the number of Palestinians; not to withdraw to the 1967 border and not to divide Jerusalem... Twenty-three years ago, Moshe Dayan proposed unilateral autonomy. On the same wavelength, we may have to espouse unilateral separation... [it] would inevitably preclude a dialogue with the Palestinians for at least 25 years.
(Landau, D. ‘Maximum Jews, Minimum Palestinians’: Ehud Olmert speaks out. Haaretz. November 13, 2003.)
Dov Weissglass, senior adviser to Sharon:
> The significance of the disengagement plan is the freezing of the peace process, and when you freeze that process, you prevent the establishment of a Palestinian state, and you prevent a discussion on the refugees, the borders and Jerusalem. Effectively, this whole package called the Palestinian state, with all that it entails, has been removed indefinitely from our agenda. And all this with authority and permission. All with a presidential blessing and the ratification of both houses of Congress. That is exactly what happened. You know, the term 'peace process' is a bundle of concepts and commitments. The peace process is the establishment of a Palestinian state with all the security risks that entails. The peace process is the evacuation of settlements, it's the return of refugees, it's the partition of Jerusalem. And all that has now been frozen... what I effectively agreed to with the Americans was that part of the settlements would not be dealt with at all, and the rest will not be dealt withuntil the Palestinians turn into Finns. That is the significance of what we did.
(Shavit, A. Top PM aide: Gaza plan aims to freeze the peace process. Haaretz. October 6, 2004.)
Shamelessly copying someone else's comment on the same topic:
> Here's a few more sources regarding Israel's illegal occupation of Gaza that has been continuous since 1967 and did not end in 2005:
> “In 2005, Israel unilaterally withdrew its troops and settlers from Gaza, though it retained control of its shared border, airspace and shoreline, giving it effective control of the movement of people and goods.”
> https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/ckgr71z0jp4o
> “Under international law, Israel is an occupying power although it already ‘disengaged’ from the Gaza Strip in 2005; it still continues to control entry and exit from Gaza by land, sea and air. Likewise, it controls Gaza’s population registry, telecommunication networks and many other aspects of daily life and infrastructure. Rather than undertaking its duty of protecting the civilian population in the Gaza Strip, Israel has been placing Palestinians under a suffocating blockade, which constitutes an unprecedented form of collective punishment in a stark violation of international humanitarian law.”
> https://euromedmonitor.org/en/gaza
> And yet objectively speaking, what happened in August of that year was not much of a “withdrawal” at all, given that the Israeli military continued to control Gaza’s borders while subjecting the territory to a punishing blockade and periodic wanton bombardment.
Excellent contribution, particularly the Weisglass interview from 2004. That’s an important piece of historical context.
What interests me is how closely some of those earlier political objectives resemble the consequences of the funding arrangements described in TIME’s investigation.
The newly obtained correspondence establishes that Israel wasn’t simply permitting humanitarian assistance to enter Gaza. Israeli officials actively encouraged, administered and repeatedly sought the continuation of the programme.
And perhaps the most revealing detail is what happened in 2023, when Qatar proposed a different mechanism that would make Palestinian civilians less dependent on both Hamas and Israel.
According to TIME’s sources, Netanyahu’s government wanted the existing arrangement maintained.
That doesn’t establish that the programme was originally designed to strengthen Hamas. But it raises a legitimate question about why the existing mechanism was preferred over an alternative intended to give civilians greater independence.
And when you consider the earlier statements about preventing Palestinian statehood, that question becomes considerably more interesting.
The distinction between humanitarian necessity and political advantage is precisely what deserves investigating. They aren’t mutually exclusive.
Thanks for bringing the historical sources into the discussion.
> And when you consider the earlier statements about preventing Palestinian statehood, that question becomes considerably more interesting.
>
> The distinction between humanitarian necessity and political advantage is precisely what deserves investigating. They aren’t mutually exclusive.
>
> Thanks for bringing the historical sources into the discussion.
There are even more, even earlier sources. It's egregious, the state of public awareness on this subject—and it's largely because the propaganda aligns with the military-industrial complex (which is where neocons' support comes from), and for a long time, it was extremely difficult to publish information about it. The internet made it easier, but media consolidation made it harder (and now, search, surveillance, and AI oligopolies plan to make it even harder).
Read the words of Jabotinsky, Moshe Dayan, etc. Asking whether it's an official Israeli government policy is unnecessary—like asking whether westward expansion or Manifest Destiny were official American government policies. It's not just policy; it's the foundation of every policy. It's the water in which the policymakers swim; they don't even notice it anymore, because it's just always there, always been there.
It's so overwhelmingly represented in the Israeli national ethos, and the essential need for hasbara so ineluctably baked into the national mythos (again, see Jabotinsky and Ben-Gurion—the need for it was so clear that the word acquired a new and very specific meaning), that many Israeli youths have no understanding of the real world anymore.
Edit: From the mass downvotes, it's clear the hasbara bots are angry about something. Let their lack of response speak for itself.
You’ve raised two particularly important historical references here.
Jabotinsky’s The Iron Wall (1923) is especially revealing because he explicitly acknowledged that Palestinian Arabs regarded the country as their national home and would naturally resist colonisation.
His proposed solution was to proceed behind an overwhelming military barrier until Palestinian resistance could no longer prevent the Zionist project. He also envisaged eventual agreement and equal rights, which makes reading the entire document important.
Original text, preserved by the Jabotinsky Institute:
https://en.jabotinsky.org/media/9747/the-iron-wall.pdf
Moshe Dayan’s 1956 eulogy for Ro’i Rothberg is another remarkable document. Dayan openly acknowledged the dispossession experienced by Palestinian refugees in Gaza, even while arguing that Israelis needed to remain militarily prepared.
These sources are particularly valuable because they allow us to examine how influential political and military figures understood the conflict in their own words.
I’d distinguish those historical ideas from the motives behind every subsequent government decision. Establishing continuity requires examining the actual policies and people involved.
But that is precisely why the correspondence surrounding Qatari funding deserves scrutiny.
We have statements of political philosophy, historical policy decisions and contemporary documentary evidence. Examining how they relate to one another is considerably more useful than treating any single explanation as sufficient.
I appreciate you bringing these earlier sources into the discussion. This is exactly the sort of historical material that deserves greater public attention.
>The question now is whether this was simply a disastrously misjudged security policy, or whether the political benefits of maintaining the status quo were allowed to outweigh the risks.
The alternative to Israel's policy of permitting humanitarian relief payments was humanitarian catastrophe and international condemnation. Remember the international uproar about Israel blocking aid during the war? If Bibi hadn't allowed Qatari aid money to enter Gaza, Israel would have suffered intense diplomatic pressure to permit it. Only worse, since Israel couldn't even point to the exigencies of hot war to justify the restrictions.
The international community has for years demanded that Israel permit Qatar's payments to Hamas, and have consistently framed the payments as necessary to prevent humanitarian catastrophy in Gaza. The payments began after Hamas kicked out the Fatah-led PA and the PA decided to stop authorizing payment of civil salaries and aid transfers, as part of Fatah's long-term civil war against Hamas. It has been, quite literally, ongoing for as long as Hamas as ruled Gaza.
(See e.x. these 2018 articles from CNN and Reuters, and these 2016 articles from Reuters and Times of Israel, and this 2012 article from NYT. See also this 2013 Al Monitor article which notes that Qatar has been funneling money to Hamas since 2008, shortly after Hamas violently seized control over Gaza from the PA.)
These questions are framed in a way that I find to be fair, but there seems to be a substantial misunderstanding of what this means in practice. Worst of all, it's usually journalists with the worst understanding.
The payments to Gaza, which is run by Hamas, was seen as a major part of the humanitarian aid process. Israel knew that a lot of money was going into the tunnels, but also thought that Hamas could be bought off by inter connecting Israel with Gaza's economy. A classical liberal understanding of how the world works.
October 7, once and for all, proved the liberal understanding of international relations with Hamas and the Muslim brotherhood and the muqawama to be ill advised. Not only was Israel punished for liberal border rules and allowing Qatari payments, it was a national disaster.
The people making fun of Netanyahu and Israel for this backfiring, or making it out to be some sort of conspiracy, are unknowingly making a far right argument. This has the unfortunate side effect of laying the groundwork for Israel ONLY responding with force.
This also undermines claims of genocide. Israeli action, then, isn't revenge - it's the only reasonable reaction to dealing with an entrenched enemy which will not ever deal in good faith. Any attempt to allow Hamas to rebuild will be met with deep domestic criticism and international ridicule. By destroying Hamas, Israeli governments face international sanction, but less domestic blowback and less international ridicule.
ignorant and ahistorical take - netanyahu has explicitly said that an extremist government in gaza (i.e hamas) is good for him and his brand of rightwing, security-focused politics.
He supported hamas against fatah/the PLO and this article is more evidence of that.
It's not ahistorical, it's accurate AND it's supported even by your rebuttal. Supporting an extremist government in Gaza leads to extreme consequences.
You are trying to make an argument that Netanyahu is a bad prime minister by making the argument that coexistence with Hamas is impossible.
I agree on both counts. He was a bad prime minister because he didn't see what a threat Hamas was, and in retrospect the consensus view that Hamas could be a stable neighbor was ultimately and utterly incorrect.
Whatever the reason Netanyahu tried to allow Qatari money to flow in.
Your framing of "oh Israel tried to treat Hamas/Gazans with a liberal approach, and underestimated how evil they are!" is nonsense. Here's a haaretz article from 2020 where an Israeli sniper details taking '42 knees in one day' from palestinian protesters at the border.
> You are trying to make an argument that Netanyahu is a bad prime minister by making the argument that coexistence with Hamas is impossible.
No, I am making the argument that Netanyahu cynically (again, he has said this himself) propped up Hamas against the more moderate Fatah, because he knew it would be politically beneficial for him. Bibi specifically has never been a liberal, he has always been dead-set on his project of creating a "Greater Israel" in the levant timesofisrael source, so painting him as such is insane lol
Netanyahu wanted an extremist government in power in Gaza, and that's what this article corroborates.
And you're continuing to reinforce my point. Even if you're correct in believing that he cynically wanted Hamas in power, and therefore acted to keep him in power, the ultimate upside is that Hamas needs to be removed.
You begin with a reasonable point about humanitarian assistance and somehow arrive at the conclusion that allegations of genocide have been disproved.
That’s quite a journey for four bullet points.
Nobody disputes that Gaza’s civilian population needed assistance. My submission statement explicitly acknowledges that.
What TIME’s investigation examines is why successive Israeli governments actively encouraged, administered and sought to preserve a particular funding mechanism, including when Qatar reportedly proposed alternatives.
Your description of Israel’s “liberal border rules” is also rather curious. The UN documented extensive restrictions on movement and a continuing blockade before 7 October 2023. Most Gaza residents weren’t even eligible to apply for Israeli exit permits.
You also assert that Israel knew substantial amounts of the Qatari payments were going into tunnels. What evidence traces these particular payments into Hamas’s military infrastructure. The TIME investigation does not establish that.
And finally, your genocide argument.
The atrocities of 7 October were real and indefensible. But they don’t retrospectively establish the motives behind Israeli funding policy, nor do they determine the legality of subsequent military operations.
Those are separate questions, governed by separate evidence.
An earlier humanitarian funding programme is neither proof nor disproof of genocide. That’s not how international law works.
You’re perfectly entitled to argue that Israel’s policy was a catastrophic strategic miscalculation. But declaring that military force was the only reasonable response, and that allegations of genocide are consequently undermined, goes considerably beyond anything established by this investigation.
Perhaps we could return to the actual documents rather than attempting to resolve several decades of international relations in four bullet points.
I think that you're only surprised at how the bullet points went - which were more paragraphs than bullet points - for two reasons. 1 - you are looking for the angle to make Israel the bad guy. 2 - you haven't thought through what you points actually mean. They mean that Israel must remove Hamas from power. Hamas delenda est. And you're the one saying it just as much as I am.
>Your description of Israel’s “liberal border rules” is also rather curious. The UN documented extensive restrictions on movement and a continuing blockade before 7 October 2023.
With Israel. Approximately 16,500 Gazans had work permits in Israel and entered Israel every day leading up to October 7. The liberal border rules was a decrease in the separation between Israeli and Gazan society and an opening up of economic and interpersonal ties.
>You also assert that Israel knew substantial amounts of the Qatari payments were going into tunnels. What evidence traces these particular payments into Hamas’s military infrastructure. The TIME investigation does not establish that.
>But they don’t retrospectively establish the motives behind Israeli funding policy, nor do they determine the legality of subsequent military operations.
They establish that other methods of de-escalation were attempted and that there is genuine casus belli to attack Hamas in Gaza.
Casus belli means that they have a legitimate reason to fight.
>You’re perfectly entitled to argue that Israel’s policy was a catastrophic strategic miscalculation. But declaring that military force was the only reasonable response, and that allegations of genocide are consequently undermined, goes considerably beyond anything established by this investigation.
Military force was the only reasonable response. In fact, because your supposition seems to be that there was a separate response that is more reasonable, I'd love for you to present it.
>Perhaps we could return to the actual documents rather than attempting to resolve several decades of international relations in four bullet points.
I don't think you've read it, you linked a brief and don't know what the sub-links go to.
First, you’re right to raise the Ynet investigation.
Ronen Bergman and Yuval Rubovitz reported intelligence warnings dating from 2019 that Qatari money was being diverted towards Hamas’s military wing, alongside allegations of a separate covert funding channel.
Those are serious findings, although they come from a separate investigation and should be distinguished from the correspondence newly published by TIME.
But surely you can see the problem this creates for your argument?
If Netanyahu’s government was repeatedly warned about diversion of funds and nevertheless continued encouraging the arrangements, that makes the question of political and security accountability more pressing, not less.
Second, your work-permit argument.
UN OCHA recorded 21,970 work-related exit permits in July 2023, while explicitly stating that most Gaza residents were not eligible to apply for Israeli exit permits.
A limited work-permit scheme and an extensive blockade are not mutually exclusive.
Third, your argument about military force.
Nobody is disputing that the atrocities of October 7 warranted a response against those responsible.
But you’ve confused having grounds for military action with the proposition that any particular military campaign was the only reasonable response.
Military necessity doesn’t override international humanitarian law. Distinction, proportionality and precautions remain binding regardless of the justification for using force.
Casus belli isn’t a blank cheque.
And finally, we’re back to the question you’ve repeatedly avoided.
TIME reports that Qatar proposed an alternative funding mechanism in 2023 intended to reduce civilian dependence on both Hamas and Israel. Netanyahu’s government reportedly wanted to preserve the existing arrangement.
Why?
That’s the policy decision this investigation invites us to examine.
Your argument about the appropriate military response after October 7 doesn’t answer a question about decisions made before October 7. They are two different subjects. It would be helpful if we could stop treating them as interchangeable.
>If Netanyahu’s government was repeatedly warned about diversion of funds and nevertheless continued encouraging the arrangements, that makes the question of political and security accountability more pressing, not less.
You're right, I think Bibi should be held to account. But you're trying to pin this on Bibi, and I'm pointing out that the overarching point is that Bibi endangered Israelis and Palestinians by facilitating these payments. I think your assumption is that I'm a Bibi fan. I'm not.
>UN OCHA recorded 21,970 work-related exit permits in July 2023, while explicitly stating that most Gaza residents were not eligible to apply for Israeli exit permits.
I was quoting the NY Times numbers with 16,500, but okay we'll work with that number.
A limited border permission to work in Israel is about slowly moving towards economic integration, building trust, and then eventually further freedoms. Baby steps towards decreased restrictions.
October 7 made those go away. Too bad, so sad, terrible that Hamas chose that for Palestinians.
>Military necessity doesn’t override international humanitarian law. Distinction, proportionality and precautions remain binding regardless of the justification for using force.
Yes, and Hamas purposely blurs distinction and has a 500KM tunnel system underneath an area the size of Philadelphia. Proportionality to the military gain is the name of the game in warfare.
Typical urban civilian : militant deaths is 9 : 1 in urban conflict. Consensus has Israeli fighting in the most ridiculous urban theater ever established at 3 : 1.
There's a reason that 90% of the buildings are destroyed and 97% of the people survived. Israeli restraint.
>TIME reports that Qatar proposed an alternative funding mechanism in 2023 intended to reduce civilian dependence on both Hamas and Israel. Netanyahu’s government reportedly wanted to preserve the existing arrangement.
>Why?
It said so in the piece, Netanyahu thought he could control Hamas with carrots. He was wrong.
>Your argument about the appropriate military response after October 7 doesn’t answer a question about decisions made before October 7. They are two different subjects. It would be helpful if we could stop treating them as interchangeable.
These are not disconnected subjects. They're interconnected. Treating the infrastructure and incentives and the politics as separate from the fighting is a misunderstanding of what war is. According to Clausewitz, war is politics by other means.
Well, we appear to have found some common ground. You agree Netanyahu should be held accountable for the funding policy. Good.
However, a few of your other assertions deserve closer examination.
First, your 9:1 civilian-to-combatant death ratio.
The frequently cited 90% statistic concerns people killed or injured by explosive weapons in populated areas. It is not an established universal ratio of civilian to combatant deaths in urban warfare.
Second, your claim of a 3:1 ratio in Gaza being the consensus.
There is no such established consensus. A 2025 investigation by +972 Magazine, Local Call and The Guardian, drawing on an Israeli military intelligence database, estimated that approximately 83% of those killed by May 2025 were civilians. Israel disputes that interpretation.
Third, your suggestion that 97% of Gaza’s population surviving demonstrates restraint.
That is an extraordinary measure of military restraint. By that logic, almost any military campaign could be defended simply by pointing to the people who weren’t killed.
The UN reported that approximately 92% of Gaza’s housing units had been damaged or destroyed by 2025.
More importantly, international humanitarian law doesn’t assess proportionality by comparing the percentage of a population killed with the percentage of buildings destroyed. It requires an assessment of anticipated civilian harm against the concrete and direct military advantage of particular attacks.
As for Clausewitz, yes, war and politics are interconnected. Nobody suggested otherwise. But quoting Clausewitz doesn’t establish that Netanyahu’s decisions were necessary, successful or legally justified.
And finally, you’ve offered Netanyahu’s supposed belief that he could control Hamas through financial incentives as the explanation for preserving the funding programme.
That’s certainly one explanation worth examining.
But an explanation of a government’s stated rationale is not necessarily a complete account of its political objectives, particularly when alternatives were available.
Which brings us back to the original investigation.
Why was maintaining that particular mechanism preferable to Qatar’s proposed alternative, which was reportedly intended to reduce civilians’ dependence on both Hamas and Israel?
That’s the question.
We’ve now travelled through work permits, urban warfare statistics, civilian casualty ratios and nineteenth-century Prussian military theory.
An impressive itinerary, but we’re still discussing an investigation into decisions made before October 7.
>There is no such established consensus. A 2025 investigation by +972 Magazine, Local Call and The Guardian, drawing on an Israeli military intelligence database, estimated that approximately 83% of those killed by May 2025 were civilians. Israel disputes that interpretation.
Yes, because when you look at what they were counting, they were counting militants whose names were known by the IDF to be Hamas prior to fighting beginning against the total list of dead in Gaza. That's not "83% killed by May 2025 were civilians." That's counting which Hamas militants Israel knew prior to fighting without counting new recruits or other militant groups like PIJ.
British Army Major Andrew Fox goes through the difficulty of Israel's fighting terrain pretty damn well.
>More importantly, international humanitarian law doesn’t assess proportionality by comparing the percentage of a population killed with the percentage of buildings destroyed. It requires an assessment of anticipated civilian harm against the concrete and direct military advantage of particular attacks.
Correct. Which is why Israel has military lawyers analyzing that collateral damage. A film called Naza just came out portraying that as a bad thing for some awful reason or another. Every attempt to show Israel isn't following international law shows that Israel is following international law.
> Nobody suggested otherwise.
You did.
>Why was maintaining that particular mechanism preferable to Qatar’s proposed alternative, which was reportedly intended to reduce civilians’ dependence on both Hamas and Israel?
Qatar didn't have an alternative, they just proposed turning off the spigot.
And what do you think happens if Israel stops providing aid? Gazans start eating mana from heaven?
Well, this is becoming quite the tour of military literature. And now we’ve arrived at NAZA. As the founder of r/PalestinianCinema, that’s a documentary I’m particularly familiar with.
First, the 83% figure.
You’re right that the intelligence database may not account for every combatant killed, particularly unidentified recruits. That’s a legitimate methodological limitation.
However, the investigation was based on Israeli military intelligence records, not simply a list of fighters known before the war. The database tracked named Hamas and Islamic Jihad members assessed as dead or probably dead.
The Guardian’s investigation acknowledges the possibility of unrecorded combatant deaths.
Your Andrew Fox reference is interesting, but it’s a rebuttal to Andy Milburn’s analysis in War on the Rocks. It doesn’t independently establish your preferred casualty ratio.
Second, military lawyers.
The existence of military legal advisers is not proof that every operation complied with international humanitarian law. If it were, establishing whether a military had committed unlawful acts would be remarkably straightforward.
NAZA contains testimony from Israeli soldiers and intelligence personnel questioning how targeting decisions were made and how anticipated civilian casualties were treated. Those allegations deserve investigation, just as the IDF’s objections deserve examination.
Your assertion that every attempt to demonstrate unlawful conduct actually proves lawful conduct is particularly curious. You’ve constructed an argument in which no evidence could possibly count against your conclusion. That’s not legal analysis.
Finally, Qatar.
TIME explicitly reports that Qatari officials pressed for a different assistance model in 2023, intended to reduce civilians’ dependence on both Hamas and Israel.
Whether that alternative was sufficiently developed or politically feasible is a legitimate question.
But describing it as simply turning off the funding misrepresents what the investigation reports.
We’ve now discussed casualty databases, military lawyers, Clausewitz, Andrew Fox and an Israeli documentary.
Yet the central question remains remarkably simple.
Why did Netanyahu’s government reportedly prefer preserving the existing mechanism when Qatar was pressing for changes?
I appreciate the extensive reading list, but an answer to that question would be rather more useful. If it’s something you cannot or don’t want to answer, fine. Say so and we can move on.
>You’re right that the intelligence database may not account for every combatant killed, particularly unidentified recruits. That’s a legitimate methodological limitation.
That's not a methodological limitation. It's the Guardian lying about what Israel says it's counting.
>However, the investigation was based on Israeli military intelligence records, not simply a list of fighters known before the war. The database tracked named Hamas and Islamic Jihad members assessed as dead or probably dead.
That's... you know that's exactly what I said, right? Only it excluded a lot of PIJ members.
>NAZA contains testimony from Israeli soldiers and intelligence personnel questioning how targeting decisions were made and how anticipated civilian casualties were treated.
NAZA contains unsubstantiated interviews with unnamed interviewees.
But it does go over the processes by which Israel conducts collateral damage assessment, and I included that because it comes after much less sexy work from +972 contributed by the makers of NAZA that people said "yeah, so?" about.
>Why did Netanyahu’s government reportedly prefer preserving the existing mechanism when Qatar was pressing for changes?
OMG, really? I answered this like 12 times.
Here's the article you linked.
> With tensions rising between Israel’s far-right ministers and Hamas, the arrangement had run its course, Qatar believed. Barnea asked for two more months. The rationale, according to the officials familiar with the conversation, was that continuing assistance to Gaza’s civilians gave Hamas something to lose and therefore gave Israel a measure of leverage over the group. After two months, the parties could reassess Hamas’s behavior and devise a more durable mechanism for delivering aid.
[OP] stammerton | 19 hours ago
SS: What makes this investigation particularly significant isn’t simply the scale of Qatari funding to Gaza, but the documentary evidence showing how successive Israeli governments actively encouraged and managed it while publicly criticising Qatar for financing Hamas.
The correspondence obtained by TIME raises serious questions about the relationship between humanitarian assistance, Israeli security policy and the political advantages of keeping Palestinian leadership divided.
It’s important to distinguish humanitarian funding from direct financing of Hamas’s military operations, which these documents do not establish. Nevertheless, the apparent contradiction between Israel’s public position and its private dealings deserves far greater scrutiny.
The question now is whether this was simply a disastrously misjudged security policy, or whether the political benefits of maintaining the status quo were allowed to outweigh the risks.
lewkiamurfarther | 9 hours ago
> The correspondence obtained by TIME raises serious questions about the relationship between humanitarian assistance, Israeli security policy and the political advantages of keeping Palestinian leadership divided.
These questions were already raised a long time ago, but unfortunately, US media has never had a material interest in informing the public.
Just for example, even the "withdrawal" of the State of Israel from Gaza in 2005 was no such thing. The State of Israel continued to control everything about Gaza, and has ever since. The whole point was to starve the Palestinian population of political options, which when combined with a policy of "mowing the grass," and of literally starving the population, was to prevent peace, and prevent "solutions" completely, one state, two state, anything.
In their own words:
Ehud Olmert, deputy leader under Sharon:
> There is no doubt in my mind that very soon the government of Israel is going to have to address the demographic issue with the utmost seriousness and resolve. This issue above all others will dictate the solution that we must adopt. In the absence of a negotiated agreement – and I do not believe in the realistic prospect of an agreement – we need to implement a unilateral alternative... More and more Palestinians are uninterested in a negotiated, two-state solution, because they want to change the essence of the conflict from an Algerian paradigm to a South African one. From a struggle against 'occupation,' in their parlance, to a struggle for one-man-one-vote. That is, of course, a much cleaner struggle, a much more popular struggle – and ultimately a much more powerful one. For us, it would mean the end of the Jewish state... the parameters of a unilateral solution are: To maximize the number of Jews; to minimize the number of Palestinians; not to withdraw to the 1967 border and not to divide Jerusalem... Twenty-three years ago, Moshe Dayan proposed unilateral autonomy. On the same wavelength, we may have to espouse unilateral separation... [it] would inevitably preclude a dialogue with the Palestinians for at least 25 years.
(Landau, D. ‘Maximum Jews, Minimum Palestinians’: Ehud Olmert speaks out. Haaretz. November 13, 2003.)
Dov Weissglass, senior adviser to Sharon:
> The significance of the disengagement plan is the freezing of the peace process, and when you freeze that process, you prevent the establishment of a Palestinian state, and you prevent a discussion on the refugees, the borders and Jerusalem. Effectively, this whole package called the Palestinian state, with all that it entails, has been removed indefinitely from our agenda. And all this with authority and permission. All with a presidential blessing and the ratification of both houses of Congress. That is exactly what happened. You know, the term 'peace process' is a bundle of concepts and commitments. The peace process is the establishment of a Palestinian state with all the security risks that entails. The peace process is the evacuation of settlements, it's the return of refugees, it's the partition of Jerusalem. And all that has now been frozen... what I effectively agreed to with the Americans was that part of the settlements would not be dealt with at all, and the rest will not be dealt with until the Palestinians turn into Finns. That is the significance of what we did.
(Shavit, A. Top PM aide: Gaza plan aims to freeze the peace process. Haaretz. October 6, 2004.)
Shamelessly copying someone else's comment on the same topic:
> Here's a few more sources regarding Israel's illegal occupation of Gaza that has been continuous since 1967 and did not end in 2005:
> “In 2005, Israel unilaterally withdrew its troops and settlers from Gaza, though it retained control of its shared border, airspace and shoreline, giving it effective control of the movement of people and goods.”
> https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/ckgr71z0jp4o
> “Under international law, Israel is an occupying power although it already ‘disengaged’ from the Gaza Strip in 2005; it still continues to control entry and exit from Gaza by land, sea and air. Likewise, it controls Gaza’s population registry, telecommunication networks and many other aspects of daily life and infrastructure. Rather than undertaking its duty of protecting the civilian population in the Gaza Strip, Israel has been placing Palestinians under a suffocating blockade, which constitutes an unprecedented form of collective punishment in a stark violation of international humanitarian law.”
> https://euromedmonitor.org/en/gaza
> And yet objectively speaking, what happened in August of that year was not much of a “withdrawal” at all, given that the Israeli military continued to control Gaza’s borders while subjecting the territory to a punishing blockade and periodic wanton bombardment.
> https://www.aljazeera.com/opinions/2025/5/17/israels-gaza-disengagement-that-paved-the-way-for-conquest
> In 2005, Israel withdrew its settlers and troops from Gaza while retaining control over its borders, seashore and airspace.
> https://www.un.org/unispal/history/
And yet, for decades, we've constantly been told by the press that Israelis really genuinely want a "two state solution".
[OP] stammerton | 8 hours ago
Excellent contribution, particularly the Weisglass interview from 2004. That’s an important piece of historical context.
What interests me is how closely some of those earlier political objectives resemble the consequences of the funding arrangements described in TIME’s investigation.
The newly obtained correspondence establishes that Israel wasn’t simply permitting humanitarian assistance to enter Gaza. Israeli officials actively encouraged, administered and repeatedly sought the continuation of the programme.
And perhaps the most revealing detail is what happened in 2023, when Qatar proposed a different mechanism that would make Palestinian civilians less dependent on both Hamas and Israel.
According to TIME’s sources, Netanyahu’s government wanted the existing arrangement maintained.
That doesn’t establish that the programme was originally designed to strengthen Hamas. But it raises a legitimate question about why the existing mechanism was preferred over an alternative intended to give civilians greater independence.
And when you consider the earlier statements about preventing Palestinian statehood, that question becomes considerably more interesting.
The distinction between humanitarian necessity and political advantage is precisely what deserves investigating. They aren’t mutually exclusive.
Thanks for bringing the historical sources into the discussion.
lewkiamurfarther | 5 hours ago
> And when you consider the earlier statements about preventing Palestinian statehood, that question becomes considerably more interesting. > > The distinction between humanitarian necessity and political advantage is precisely what deserves investigating. They aren’t mutually exclusive. > > Thanks for bringing the historical sources into the discussion.
There are even more, even earlier sources. It's egregious, the state of public awareness on this subject—and it's largely because the propaganda aligns with the military-industrial complex (which is where neocons' support comes from), and for a long time, it was extremely difficult to publish information about it. The internet made it easier, but media consolidation made it harder (and now, search, surveillance, and AI oligopolies plan to make it even harder).
Read the words of Jabotinsky, Moshe Dayan, etc. Asking whether it's an official Israeli government policy is unnecessary—like asking whether westward expansion or Manifest Destiny were official American government policies. It's not just policy; it's the foundation of every policy. It's the water in which the policymakers swim; they don't even notice it anymore, because it's just always there, always been there.
It's so overwhelmingly represented in the Israeli national ethos, and the essential need for hasbara so ineluctably baked into the national mythos (again, see Jabotinsky and Ben-Gurion—the need for it was so clear that the word acquired a new and very specific meaning), that many Israeli youths have no understanding of the real world anymore.
Edit: From the mass downvotes, it's clear the hasbara bots are angry about something. Let their lack of response speak for itself.
[OP] stammerton | 5 hours ago
You’ve raised two particularly important historical references here.
Jabotinsky’s The Iron Wall (1923) is especially revealing because he explicitly acknowledged that Palestinian Arabs regarded the country as their national home and would naturally resist colonisation.
His proposed solution was to proceed behind an overwhelming military barrier until Palestinian resistance could no longer prevent the Zionist project. He also envisaged eventual agreement and equal rights, which makes reading the entire document important.
Original text, preserved by the Jabotinsky Institute:
https://en.jabotinsky.org/media/9747/the-iron-wall.pdf
Moshe Dayan’s 1956 eulogy for Ro’i Rothberg is another remarkable document. Dayan openly acknowledged the dispossession experienced by Palestinian refugees in Gaza, even while arguing that Israelis needed to remain militarily prepared.
https://jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/Quote/dayan1.html
These sources are particularly valuable because they allow us to examine how influential political and military figures understood the conflict in their own words.
I’d distinguish those historical ideas from the motives behind every subsequent government decision. Establishing continuity requires examining the actual policies and people involved.
But that is precisely why the correspondence surrounding Qatari funding deserves scrutiny.
We have statements of political philosophy, historical policy decisions and contemporary documentary evidence. Examining how they relate to one another is considerably more useful than treating any single explanation as sufficient.
I appreciate you bringing these earlier sources into the discussion. This is exactly the sort of historical material that deserves greater public attention.
Chanan-Ben-Zev | 11 hours ago
>The question now is whether this was simply a disastrously misjudged security policy, or whether the political benefits of maintaining the status quo were allowed to outweigh the risks.
The alternative to Israel's policy of permitting humanitarian relief payments was humanitarian catastrophe and international condemnation. Remember the international uproar about Israel blocking aid during the war? If Bibi hadn't allowed Qatari aid money to enter Gaza, Israel would have suffered intense diplomatic pressure to permit it. Only worse, since Israel couldn't even point to the exigencies of hot war to justify the restrictions.
The international community has for years demanded that Israel permit Qatar's payments to Hamas, and have consistently framed the payments as necessary to prevent humanitarian catastrophy in Gaza. The payments began after Hamas kicked out the Fatah-led PA and the PA decided to stop authorizing payment of civil salaries and aid transfers, as part of Fatah's long-term civil war against Hamas. It has been, quite literally, ongoing for as long as Hamas as ruled Gaza.
(See e.x. these 2018 articles from CNN and Reuters, and these 2016 articles from Reuters and Times of Israel, and this 2012 article from NYT. See also this 2013 Al Monitor article which notes that Qatar has been funneling money to Hamas since 2008, shortly after Hamas violently seized control over Gaza from the PA.)
MelodiusRA | 8 hours ago
Shocker, Israel gets Qatar to fund infrastructure in Gaza; Palestine uses the money instead for weapons and attacks Israel.
Israel gets blamed, lmao
PuzzleheadedEmu4596 | 12 hours ago
These questions are framed in a way that I find to be fair, but there seems to be a substantial misunderstanding of what this means in practice. Worst of all, it's usually journalists with the worst understanding.
PersistentBadger | 10 hours ago
ii. A single action by a single group of people doesn't necessarily invalidate a policy of economic integration (if that's what it was).
iii. I don't believe Israel alters foreign policy based on mean things people say on the internet.
skydream416 | 11 hours ago
ignorant and ahistorical take - netanyahu has explicitly said that an extremist government in gaza (i.e hamas) is good for him and his brand of rightwing, security-focused politics.
He supported hamas against fatah/the PLO and this article is more evidence of that.
PuzzleheadedEmu4596 | 11 hours ago
It's not ahistorical, it's accurate AND it's supported even by your rebuttal. Supporting an extremist government in Gaza leads to extreme consequences.
You are trying to make an argument that Netanyahu is a bad prime minister by making the argument that coexistence with Hamas is impossible.
I agree on both counts. He was a bad prime minister because he didn't see what a threat Hamas was, and in retrospect the consensus view that Hamas could be a stable neighbor was ultimately and utterly incorrect.
Whatever the reason Netanyahu tried to allow Qatari money to flow in.
skydream416 | 11 hours ago
Lol, it is both ignorant and ahistorical -
Your framing of "oh Israel tried to treat Hamas/Gazans with a liberal approach, and underestimated how evil they are!" is nonsense. Here's a haaretz article from 2020 where an Israeli sniper details taking '42 knees in one day' from palestinian protesters at the border.
> You are trying to make an argument that Netanyahu is a bad prime minister by making the argument that coexistence with Hamas is impossible.
No, I am making the argument that Netanyahu cynically (again, he has said this himself) propped up Hamas against the more moderate Fatah, because he knew it would be politically beneficial for him. Bibi specifically has never been a liberal, he has always been dead-set on his project of creating a "Greater Israel" in the levant timesofisrael source, so painting him as such is insane lol
Netanyahu wanted an extremist government in power in Gaza, and that's what this article corroborates.
PuzzleheadedEmu4596 | 9 hours ago
And you're continuing to reinforce my point. Even if you're correct in believing that he cynically wanted Hamas in power, and therefore acted to keep him in power, the ultimate upside is that Hamas needs to be removed.
[OP] stammerton | 8 hours ago
You begin with a reasonable point about humanitarian assistance and somehow arrive at the conclusion that allegations of genocide have been disproved.
That’s quite a journey for four bullet points.
Nobody disputes that Gaza’s civilian population needed assistance. My submission statement explicitly acknowledges that.
What TIME’s investigation examines is why successive Israeli governments actively encouraged, administered and sought to preserve a particular funding mechanism, including when Qatar reportedly proposed alternatives.
Your description of Israel’s “liberal border rules” is also rather curious. The UN documented extensive restrictions on movement and a continuing blockade before 7 October 2023. Most Gaza residents weren’t even eligible to apply for Israeli exit permits.
https://www.ochaopt.org/content/movement-and-out-gaza-update-covering-july-2023
You also assert that Israel knew substantial amounts of the Qatari payments were going into tunnels. What evidence traces these particular payments into Hamas’s military infrastructure. The TIME investigation does not establish that.
And finally, your genocide argument.
The atrocities of 7 October were real and indefensible. But they don’t retrospectively establish the motives behind Israeli funding policy, nor do they determine the legality of subsequent military operations.
Those are separate questions, governed by separate evidence.
An earlier humanitarian funding programme is neither proof nor disproof of genocide. That’s not how international law works.
You’re perfectly entitled to argue that Israel’s policy was a catastrophic strategic miscalculation. But declaring that military force was the only reasonable response, and that allegations of genocide are consequently undermined, goes considerably beyond anything established by this investigation.
Perhaps we could return to the actual documents rather than attempting to resolve several decades of international relations in four bullet points.
PuzzleheadedEmu4596 | 7 hours ago
I think that you're only surprised at how the bullet points went - which were more paragraphs than bullet points - for two reasons. 1 - you are looking for the angle to make Israel the bad guy. 2 - you haven't thought through what you points actually mean. They mean that Israel must remove Hamas from power. Hamas delenda est. And you're the one saying it just as much as I am.
>Your description of Israel’s “liberal border rules” is also rather curious. The UN documented extensive restrictions on movement and a continuing blockade before 7 October 2023.
With Israel. Approximately 16,500 Gazans had work permits in Israel and entered Israel every day leading up to October 7. The liberal border rules was a decrease in the separation between Israeli and Gazan society and an opening up of economic and interpersonal ties.
>You also assert that Israel knew substantial amounts of the Qatari payments were going into tunnels. What evidence traces these particular payments into Hamas’s military infrastructure. The TIME investigation does not establish that.
Your link goes to this, read your own article postings.
https://www.ynetnews.com/article/r1vspdmhge#google_vignette
>But they don’t retrospectively establish the motives behind Israeli funding policy, nor do they determine the legality of subsequent military operations.
They establish that other methods of de-escalation were attempted and that there is genuine casus belli to attack Hamas in Gaza.
Casus belli means that they have a legitimate reason to fight.
>You’re perfectly entitled to argue that Israel’s policy was a catastrophic strategic miscalculation. But declaring that military force was the only reasonable response, and that allegations of genocide are consequently undermined, goes considerably beyond anything established by this investigation.
Military force was the only reasonable response. In fact, because your supposition seems to be that there was a separate response that is more reasonable, I'd love for you to present it.
>Perhaps we could return to the actual documents rather than attempting to resolve several decades of international relations in four bullet points.
I don't think you've read it, you linked a brief and don't know what the sub-links go to.
[OP] stammerton | 7 hours ago
Well, now we’re getting somewhere.
First, you’re right to raise the Ynet investigation.
Ronen Bergman and Yuval Rubovitz reported intelligence warnings dating from 2019 that Qatari money was being diverted towards Hamas’s military wing, alongside allegations of a separate covert funding channel.
Those are serious findings, although they come from a separate investigation and should be distinguished from the correspondence newly published by TIME.
But surely you can see the problem this creates for your argument?
If Netanyahu’s government was repeatedly warned about diversion of funds and nevertheless continued encouraging the arrangements, that makes the question of political and security accountability more pressing, not less.
Second, your work-permit argument.
UN OCHA recorded 21,970 work-related exit permits in July 2023, while explicitly stating that most Gaza residents were not eligible to apply for Israeli exit permits.
A limited work-permit scheme and an extensive blockade are not mutually exclusive.
Third, your argument about military force.
Nobody is disputing that the atrocities of October 7 warranted a response against those responsible.
But you’ve confused having grounds for military action with the proposition that any particular military campaign was the only reasonable response.
Military necessity doesn’t override international humanitarian law. Distinction, proportionality and precautions remain binding regardless of the justification for using force.
Casus belli isn’t a blank cheque.
And finally, we’re back to the question you’ve repeatedly avoided.
TIME reports that Qatar proposed an alternative funding mechanism in 2023 intended to reduce civilian dependence on both Hamas and Israel. Netanyahu’s government reportedly wanted to preserve the existing arrangement.
Why?
That’s the policy decision this investigation invites us to examine.
Your argument about the appropriate military response after October 7 doesn’t answer a question about decisions made before October 7. They are two different subjects. It would be helpful if we could stop treating them as interchangeable.
Sources:
https://www.ynetnews.com/article/r1vspdmhge
https://www.ochaopt.org/content/movement-and-out-gaza-update-covering-july-2023
https://www.icrc.org/en/law-and-policy/conduct-hostilities-and-protection-civilians
PuzzleheadedEmu4596 | 7 hours ago
>If Netanyahu’s government was repeatedly warned about diversion of funds and nevertheless continued encouraging the arrangements, that makes the question of political and security accountability more pressing, not less.
You're right, I think Bibi should be held to account. But you're trying to pin this on Bibi, and I'm pointing out that the overarching point is that Bibi endangered Israelis and Palestinians by facilitating these payments. I think your assumption is that I'm a Bibi fan. I'm not.
>UN OCHA recorded 21,970 work-related exit permits in July 2023, while explicitly stating that most Gaza residents were not eligible to apply for Israeli exit permits.
I was quoting the NY Times numbers with 16,500, but okay we'll work with that number.
A limited border permission to work in Israel is about slowly moving towards economic integration, building trust, and then eventually further freedoms. Baby steps towards decreased restrictions.
October 7 made those go away. Too bad, so sad, terrible that Hamas chose that for Palestinians.
>Military necessity doesn’t override international humanitarian law. Distinction, proportionality and precautions remain binding regardless of the justification for using force.
Yes, and Hamas purposely blurs distinction and has a 500KM tunnel system underneath an area the size of Philadelphia. Proportionality to the military gain is the name of the game in warfare.
Typical urban civilian : militant deaths is 9 : 1 in urban conflict. Consensus has Israeli fighting in the most ridiculous urban theater ever established at 3 : 1.
There's a reason that 90% of the buildings are destroyed and 97% of the people survived. Israeli restraint.
>TIME reports that Qatar proposed an alternative funding mechanism in 2023 intended to reduce civilian dependence on both Hamas and Israel. Netanyahu’s government reportedly wanted to preserve the existing arrangement.
>Why?
It said so in the piece, Netanyahu thought he could control Hamas with carrots. He was wrong.
>Your argument about the appropriate military response after October 7 doesn’t answer a question about decisions made before October 7. They are two different subjects. It would be helpful if we could stop treating them as interchangeable.
These are not disconnected subjects. They're interconnected. Treating the infrastructure and incentives and the politics as separate from the fighting is a misunderstanding of what war is. According to Clausewitz, war is politics by other means.
[OP] stammerton | 7 hours ago
Well, we appear to have found some common ground. You agree Netanyahu should be held accountable for the funding policy. Good.
However, a few of your other assertions deserve closer examination.
First, your 9:1 civilian-to-combatant death ratio.
The frequently cited 90% statistic concerns people killed or injured by explosive weapons in populated areas. It is not an established universal ratio of civilian to combatant deaths in urban warfare.
Second, your claim of a 3:1 ratio in Gaza being the consensus.
There is no such established consensus. A 2025 investigation by +972 Magazine, Local Call and The Guardian, drawing on an Israeli military intelligence database, estimated that approximately 83% of those killed by May 2025 were civilians. Israel disputes that interpretation.
https://www.972mag.com/israeli-intelligence-database-83-percent-civilians-militants/
Third, your suggestion that 97% of Gaza’s population surviving demonstrates restraint.
That is an extraordinary measure of military restraint. By that logic, almost any military campaign could be defended simply by pointing to the people who weren’t killed.
The UN reported that approximately 92% of Gaza’s housing units had been damaged or destroyed by 2025.
More importantly, international humanitarian law doesn’t assess proportionality by comparing the percentage of a population killed with the percentage of buildings destroyed. It requires an assessment of anticipated civilian harm against the concrete and direct military advantage of particular attacks.
https://www.icrc.org/en/document/international-expert-meeting-report-principle-proportionality
As for Clausewitz, yes, war and politics are interconnected. Nobody suggested otherwise. But quoting Clausewitz doesn’t establish that Netanyahu’s decisions were necessary, successful or legally justified.
And finally, you’ve offered Netanyahu’s supposed belief that he could control Hamas through financial incentives as the explanation for preserving the funding programme.
That’s certainly one explanation worth examining.
But an explanation of a government’s stated rationale is not necessarily a complete account of its political objectives, particularly when alternatives were available.
Which brings us back to the original investigation.
Why was maintaining that particular mechanism preferable to Qatar’s proposed alternative, which was reportedly intended to reduce civilians’ dependence on both Hamas and Israel?
That’s the question.
We’ve now travelled through work permits, urban warfare statistics, civilian casualty ratios and nineteenth-century Prussian military theory.
An impressive itinerary, but we’re still discussing an investigation into decisions made before October 7.
PuzzleheadedEmu4596 | 6 hours ago
>There is no such established consensus. A 2025 investigation by +972 Magazine, Local Call and The Guardian, drawing on an Israeli military intelligence database, estimated that approximately 83% of those killed by May 2025 were civilians. Israel disputes that interpretation.
Yes, because when you look at what they were counting, they were counting militants whose names were known by the IDF to be Hamas prior to fighting beginning against the total list of dead in Gaza. That's not "83% killed by May 2025 were civilians." That's counting which Hamas militants Israel knew prior to fighting without counting new recruits or other militant groups like PIJ.
https://henryjacksonsociety.org/2026/02/05/analysis-on-the-rocks-a-rebuttal/
British Army Major Andrew Fox goes through the difficulty of Israel's fighting terrain pretty damn well.
>More importantly, international humanitarian law doesn’t assess proportionality by comparing the percentage of a population killed with the percentage of buildings destroyed. It requires an assessment of anticipated civilian harm against the concrete and direct military advantage of particular attacks.
Correct. Which is why Israel has military lawyers analyzing that collateral damage. A film called Naza just came out portraying that as a bad thing for some awful reason or another. Every attempt to show Israel isn't following international law shows that Israel is following international law.
> Nobody suggested otherwise.
You did.
>Why was maintaining that particular mechanism preferable to Qatar’s proposed alternative, which was reportedly intended to reduce civilians’ dependence on both Hamas and Israel?
Qatar didn't have an alternative, they just proposed turning off the spigot.
And what do you think happens if Israel stops providing aid? Gazans start eating mana from heaven?
[OP] stammerton | 6 hours ago
Well, this is becoming quite the tour of military literature. And now we’ve arrived at NAZA. As the founder of r/PalestinianCinema, that’s a documentary I’m particularly familiar with.
First, the 83% figure.
You’re right that the intelligence database may not account for every combatant killed, particularly unidentified recruits. That’s a legitimate methodological limitation.
However, the investigation was based on Israeli military intelligence records, not simply a list of fighters known before the war. The database tracked named Hamas and Islamic Jihad members assessed as dead or probably dead.
The Guardian’s investigation acknowledges the possibility of unrecorded combatant deaths.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/ng-interactive/2025/aug/21/revealed-israeli-militarys-own-data-indicates-civilian-death-rate-of-83-in-gaza-war
Your Andrew Fox reference is interesting, but it’s a rebuttal to Andy Milburn’s analysis in War on the Rocks. It doesn’t independently establish your preferred casualty ratio.
Second, military lawyers.
The existence of military legal advisers is not proof that every operation complied with international humanitarian law. If it were, establishing whether a military had committed unlawful acts would be remarkably straightforward.
NAZA contains testimony from Israeli soldiers and intelligence personnel questioning how targeting decisions were made and how anticipated civilian casualties were treated. Those allegations deserve investigation, just as the IDF’s objections deserve examination.
Your assertion that every attempt to demonstrate unlawful conduct actually proves lawful conduct is particularly curious. You’ve constructed an argument in which no evidence could possibly count against your conclusion. That’s not legal analysis.
Finally, Qatar.
TIME explicitly reports that Qatari officials pressed for a different assistance model in 2023, intended to reduce civilians’ dependence on both Hamas and Israel.
Whether that alternative was sufficiently developed or politically feasible is a legitimate question.
But describing it as simply turning off the funding misrepresents what the investigation reports.
https://ca.time.com/exclusive-israel-qatar-payments-to-gaza/
We’ve now discussed casualty databases, military lawyers, Clausewitz, Andrew Fox and an Israeli documentary.
Yet the central question remains remarkably simple.
Why did Netanyahu’s government reportedly prefer preserving the existing mechanism when Qatar was pressing for changes?
I appreciate the extensive reading list, but an answer to that question would be rather more useful. If it’s something you cannot or don’t want to answer, fine. Say so and we can move on.
PuzzleheadedEmu4596 | 6 hours ago
>You’re right that the intelligence database may not account for every combatant killed, particularly unidentified recruits. That’s a legitimate methodological limitation.
That's not a methodological limitation. It's the Guardian lying about what Israel says it's counting.
>However, the investigation was based on Israeli military intelligence records, not simply a list of fighters known before the war. The database tracked named Hamas and Islamic Jihad members assessed as dead or probably dead.
That's... you know that's exactly what I said, right? Only it excluded a lot of PIJ members.
>NAZA contains testimony from Israeli soldiers and intelligence personnel questioning how targeting decisions were made and how anticipated civilian casualties were treated.
NAZA contains unsubstantiated interviews with unnamed interviewees.
But it does go over the processes by which Israel conducts collateral damage assessment, and I included that because it comes after much less sexy work from +972 contributed by the makers of NAZA that people said "yeah, so?" about.
>Why did Netanyahu’s government reportedly prefer preserving the existing mechanism when Qatar was pressing for changes?
OMG, really? I answered this like 12 times.
Here's the article you linked.
> With tensions rising between Israel’s far-right ministers and Hamas, the arrangement had run its course, Qatar believed. Barnea asked for two more months. The rationale, according to the officials familiar with the conversation, was that continuing assistance to Gaza’s civilians gave Hamas something to lose and therefore gave Israel a measure of leverage over the group. After two months, the parties could reassess Hamas’s behavior and devise a more durable mechanism for delivering aid.
Read the sources you link!
MosesDoughty | 5 hours ago
And I'm sure if this was said they didn't, they'd be criticized for not letting aid in.