On May 21, 2021 – over two years before the October 7, 2023 Hamas attack on southern Israel – MEMRI President and Founder Yigal Carmon published an analysis in the Hebrew-language kibbutz weekly The Green Time (Hazman Hayarok). In it, he examined the background to the events and outcomes of the May 2021 Israel-Gaza clashes, and maintained that the clashes were rooted in the policy of then and current Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu allowing Hamas to establish a military empire in Gaza with funds from the supporter of Islamist terror organizations worldwide – Qatar. He also emphasized the need for a new Israeli strategy suitable for war iin civilian areas in which the enemy uses women and children as human shields.
Below is the English translation of Yigal Carmon's May 21, 2021 analysis, as published by MEMRI in Hebrew on May 24, 2021. [1]
A War Without A Strategic Goal
Carmon harshly criticizes Netanyahu's policies, goals, and conduct. "I heard the prime minister say that our goal was to strike Hamas. But this goal is for the brigade commander level, or even below that. A prime minister should have a strategic-political goal. The sight of the destruction we sowed in Gaza is heartbreaking, even though we did so only because Hamas protected itself by using women and children as human shields, so that the only path to its fighters, who were hiding deep underground, went through the civilian population. Everyone knows that the Hamas headquarters were under Al-Shifa Hospital. When a government goes to war knowing its limitations in fighting an enemy that hides behind a human shield, it must take into consideration the limitations of fighting in an area populated by civilians.
"Israel, led by a prime minister with no goal other than striking Hamas, acted like a giant striking right and left at secondary targets, with no political purpose. Netanyahu also claimed that he had restored security to the citizens of Israel. Israel's citizens understand how ridiculous this statement is. Hamas used only about a third of its stockpile of missiles, and will be able to go back to firing them whenever it wants, even at the cost of another Israeli military strike against it. So what security has been restored?"
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According to Carmon, "the real question is why we allowed Hamas to become a huge power in Gaza, with an underground city and 20,000 or more military operatives. The missiles themselves were provided by Iran. But Netanyahu, with shocking irresponsibility, allowed the massive underground construction, and the creation of a military recruitment system and a command and control array. He opened to Qatar – the emirate that supports Islamic terrorism worldwide – all options to transfer hundreds of millions of dollars to Gaza, some of it in suitcases, as if for humanitarian purposes. Anyone seeing for the first time, in the coverage of the war, Gaza City's high-rise buildings stretching from horizon to horizon – including in the refugee camps – would finally be able to know and realize that there was no humanitarian crisis in Gaza.
"Tales of years of humanitarian crisis, believed by many good people in Israel itself, were ultimately disproved by a terrible sight. The stories about a humanitarian crisis were aimed at justifying a criminally irresponsible policy that allowed Hamas to establish its military empire with the Qatari funds. One person is responsible for this tragedy: Benjamin Netanyahu. For seven years – since the previous round of armed clashes [in July-August 2014], and actually even before that – he allowed Qatar to pour hundreds of millions of dollars into the Gaza Strip. Since Hamas ruled it with an iron fist, the funneling of the money 'to Gaza' was like putting the money into Hamas's hand. Does Netanyahu not know who Qatar is, whom the Qatari regime finances, and whom it protects? Moreover, does Netanyahu not understand that by prioritizing Qatar, he is stabbing the United Arab Emirates – with whom he made peace – in the back?
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"The Qatari regime supports terrorist organizations, both Shiite and Sunni, throughout the Arab and Muslim world. It paid Sunni terrorists to release dozens of members of Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps who were kidnapped in Iraq. Qatar supports and finances the Taliban in Afghanistan, and shielded Khaled Sheikh Mohammed, the future mastermind of the 9/11. When the FBI came to Doha to arrest him, informing only the Qatari emir, the man disappeared within hours. Today, Khaled Sheikh Mohammed's place has been taken by [top Hamas officials] Khaled Mashal and Ismail Haniyeh, who are operating from their headquarters in the capital of Qatar. An entire issue of this magazine would not be sufficient to describe Qatar's connection to Islamic terrorism in the region and the world. The Muslim Brotherhood's propaganda channel, Al-Jazeera, is financed by the Qatari regime, and operates as a recruitment and shielding apparatus for terrorist organization and movements. An Al-Jazeera broadcast about Osama bin Laden called on thousands of young men in the Muslim world to join the ranks of Al-Qaeda. One of the channel's reporters was arrested, tried, and convicted in Spain for transferring funds to Al-Qaeda. This is not media activity."
Ismail Haniyeh thanks the emir of Qatar, Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Aal-Thani, for his country's support for Hamas. (Source: qudspress.com)
Netanyahu And Hamas Forever
"Doesn't the intelligence community know who Qatar is?" wonders Yigal Carmon. "And if it knows and did not warn about Qatar, but rather cooperated with Netanyahu's reckless policy regarding Qatar, that's worse. The head of the Mossad even went on a mission for Netanyahu, to ask the Qatari government to continue transferring funds to Gaza. There are no words to describe the absurdity and horror of this situation. It all leads to one thing: the 'great secret' known to all Israel's political and media circles (but not to Netanyahu's right-wing supporters): He is not interested today, nor was he in the past after previous rounds of armed clashes with Hamas, in destroying Hamas's rule in Gaza. He also has no such political goal now, after the current war. Most journalists covering the territories and security matters know this. It is almost declared policy. The idea is to keep Hamas in power. This is a quasi-official position that has supporters on both the right and the left – a partnership of reckless people."
Why Is Netanyahu Doing This?
"There are various explanations for this, all of them pointless sophistry. I will note here two: One is politically motivated – the desire to separate the PLO from Hamas, and the West Bank from the Gaza Strip. Netanyahu must have thought himself clever, but this is primitive and stupid pretension, and in fact it achieved the opposite result. With this policy, he both allowed Hamas to take over the Palestinian public in the territories and in Jerusalem, and strengthened the Islamic movement in Israel. Last Friday (May 21, 2021), following the war, young Hamas members expelled the Palestinian Authority's men, and its mufti, from Al-Aqsa mosque, and became its undeclared rulers.
"The second explanation, which is unbelievably foolish, goes like this: If we break Hamas's rule, there will be chaos in Gaza; such chaos will oblige us to return to rule there, and we are not interested in that.
"However, even in the event of chaos, we have no obligation to return to Gaza and ensure order there, after we were attacked. There is the United Nations, there are international organizations, there is Egypt. The PLO too might return to the Gaza Strip after being violently expelled from there by Hamas. And in any case, we abandoned Gaza [in 2005] never to return, and chaos is better than a Hamas military empire that strikes us."
Reckless Policy Toward Qatar
"These arguments are so baseless," Carmon continues, "that they inevitably open the door to conspiracy theories to explain Netanyahu's reckless connection to Qatar – theories I will not go into. If the head of the Mossad, the head of the Shin Bet, the head of Military Intelligence, and the head of the National Security Council don't know about Qatar's role in ensuring the existence and activity of the Muslim Brotherhood worldwide and its role in funding Hamas in Gaza, it's a tragedy. But of course they know the facts very well. How is it possible that Israel’s prime minister allows, and facilitates, the growth of Hamas's empire in Gaza, and everyone cooperates with him as if they are not responsible for protecting us? The blood of the victims in this round of conflict is on the hands not only of Hamas but also of Netanyahu, and it will be the same in the next round as well if he continues his reckless policy toward Hamas and Qatar. His treatment of Qatar as a legitimate political entity, as a mediator and permitting Qatar to assist the population, borders on crime."
So What Are We To Do?
"We must act on several levels simultaneously. First, there is a need for a political, informational, and operational struggle against Hamas and its great supporter – the emir of Qatar and the Aal Thani ruling family. They should be fought also on global level. We must clarify to all our supporters in the West that both Qatar and Hamas are our enemies. As you may recall, after the [1972 Summer Olympics] Munich massacre, in which 11 Israeli athletes were murdered, the Israeli government decided to act against Black September operatives massacres wherever they might be. In the current war, thousands of missiles have been fired at Israel, yet Hamas continues to operate within Doha as an active command center. Is the Mossad, which was able to operate throughout an entire night in the heart of Tehran to bring vital documents to Israel, unable to effect the expulsion of the Hamas command center, headed by Mashal and Haniyeh, from Qatar? Netanyahu is simply not interested in this.
"Some maintain that a war against Hamas cannot produce results without a ground invasion of Gaza, and this we do not want. Proposing this alternative is a straw man aimed at justifying the continuation of the current situation. There is no need to invade Gaza to fight Hamas. One must begin by completely cutting Hamas off from its sources of funding. Any Qatari money is terrorist, poisoned, and unacceptable – even if its aimed at funding schools. Ultimately, some of it will produce hate-filled fighters, and some will designated for building the 'metro' of underground tunnels.
"It is important to stress this: A war with Hamas is not a war with the Palestinians, with whom we seek a peaceful solution. Hamas is not synonymous with the Palestinian people – just as the Muslim Brotherhood is not the Egyptian people. Hamas is a terror organization that took over the Gaza Strip and the fact is that it violently expelled the PLO from there."
Needed: A Strategy For A War Without A Battlefield
In conclusion, Yigal Carmon quotes Mohammed Massad, a Palestinian activist from the Jenin area, who was a terrorist in his youth, and then matured, studied [at university], and changed direction. Massad addressed the Israeli public in Hebrew in a video, saying: "You have no goal, and without a goal, you will never be justified, and you will never win."
Carmon: "We don't have a war with the Palestinians, only with Hamas, and only a determined battle against Hamas will allow other parties to pursue a path of peace.
"It is important to understand this: A country embarking on a 'hybrid war,' in which there is no longer a battlefield and net military decisiveness, in which enemy hides behind women and children, and their soldiers sometimes even disguise themselves as civilians – as happened in Ukraine, a problem that NATO came to know, and as U.S. troops learned firsthand in Iraq and Afghanistan – [such a country] must develop a strategy and a system of non-military means whose uppermost principle is not to harm civilians.
"On the one hand, Israel needs to develop anti-missile defense measures, and the Iron Dome is absolutely not the last and final word in the array of possible measures. On the other hand, it must relinquish a conventional military victory, which is a Pyrrhic victory. The government should have considered that the price of military war in a civilian arena is great damage to its international standing and to world Jewry, to an extent that can hardly be exaggerated. A transition to a new strategy is vital, in light of a possible confrontation with Hizbullah, whose fighters also hide behind women and children and who possess 140,000 missiles – 10 times more than Hamas had."
*Yigal Carmon is President and Founder of MEMRI.
[1] Memri.org.il/cgi-webaxy/item?5416, May 24, 2021.
