Netanyahu, Qatar, and Required Accountability

The evidence does not establish that Qatar “operated” Benjamin Netanyahu. It establishes something serious enough: a failed strategy built around Qatari influence in Gaza, disturbing allegations involving people in the prime minister’s inner circle, and new reports about warnings before October 7 that Israel still has not properly investigated.

Nearly three years after October 7, Israel is heading toward another election without having completed the most basic task demanded by a national catastrophe: establishing what happened, who knew what, which decisions failed, and who bears responsibility.

The failure of October 7 was not the work of one man. The IDF failed. Military intelligence failed. The Shin Bet failed. The political leadership failed. An entire strategic conception regarding Hamas collapsed in a matter of hours. But collective failure cannot become collective immunity. Benjamin Netanyahu was prime minister, had shaped Israel’s policy toward Hamas for years, and held the highest political responsibility for the country’s security. That responsibility cannot disappear simply because others failed as well.

A new report makes that principle more urgent.
According to an investigation based on a book by journalists Shlomi Eldar and Ruth Yuval, UAE President Mohammed bin Zayed personally warned Netanyahu roughly ten days before October 7 that Yahya Sinwar was preparing a major move. The warning was reportedly described in terms of an “earthquake,” and, according to the report, Netanyahu assessed that Hamas’s attention was focused primarily on the West Bank. The information was not passed to the heads of the IDF, Shin Bet or Mossad. Netanyahu’s office has categorically denied the account, calling it a “complete lie” and denying that such a warning was received.

The denial matters. So does the allegation.
If the report is accurate, it does not prove that Netanyahu knew when Hamas would attack, how the assault would unfold or that thousands of terrorists would cross the border on October 7. But that is not the relevant standard. A direct warning from the president of the UAE concerning the intentions of the leader of Hamas was precisely the kind of information that should have entered Israel’s national-security system, been assessed against other intelligence and reached those responsible for preparing the country for war.

If it reached the prime minister and stopped there, that is not a minor intelligence-processing error. It is a failure at the political center of the state. For years, Netanyahu’s defenders have argued that the security establishment failed to alert him adequately before October 7. The new report, if substantiated, complicates that defense profoundly. It suggests that the problem was not simply that intelligence failed to travel upward. Potentially critical information may also have failed to travel downward from the prime minister himself.

That matters because October 7 was preceded not only by an intelligence failure, but by a strategic conception. Hamas was regarded as deterred. Economic incentives were expected to encourage stability. Limited confrontation was considered preferable to strategic disruption. Qatar became part of that architecture.

Under Netanyahu-led governments, Israel approved the transfer of Qatari funds into Gaza as part of a policy intended to preserve calm and prevent escalation. In 2018, after the Palestinian Authority stopped paying salaries in Gaza, Qatari money was transferred in cash with Israeli approval. Netanyahu has since rejected the allegation that he “bankrolled Hamas,” noting that Qatari money entered Gaza under different governments and with the support of security officials. That broader context is important. But it does not erase the fact that his governments embraced and maintained the strategy.

Policies must be judged not only by the intentions behind them, but by their results.
The strategy was meant to buy stability. Hamas used those years to expand its military capabilities, deepen its tunnel network and prepare for the most devastating attack in Israel’s history. That does not mean Qatari funding alone created Hamas’s military machine, nor does it prove that Netanyahu intended to strengthen Hamas. It does mean that one of the central assumptions underlying Israel’s Gaza policy proved catastrophically wrong.

A failed strategy can still be an honest mistake. Qatargate makes the story more disturbing because it introduces a different problem: the possible penetration of Qatari interests into the political environment surrounding the Israeli prime minister.

The investigation has focused on allegations involving several Netanyahu advisers and associates, including Jonatan Urich, Eli Feldstein and Yisrael Einhorn. In August, The Times of Israel reported that the attorney general was expected to move toward national-security charges against Urich and Feldstein, subject to hearings and the normal legal process. Both are entitled to the presumption of innocence, and Netanyahu himself has not been charged in Qatargate.

Even more troubling, The Times of Israel reported allegations that Urich, Einhorn and Feldstein passed classified information concerning Israeli concerns about Egypt to Qatar while allegedly receiving money connected to Doha. According to the report, that information was then fed back into the Israeli media as part of an effort to weaken Egypt’s standing and strengthen Qatar’s role in negotiations. These remain allegations, not judicial findings, but their national-security significance is obvious.

Qatar is not an ordinary foreign client.
It hosted senior Hamas leaders. It played a central role in financing Gaza. It became an indispensable mediator between Israel and Hamas, including in hostage negotiations. Its interests were therefore directly entangled with some of the most sensitive decisions facing the Israeli government.

Against that background, the possibility that people operating close to the prime minister were also being paid to advance Qatari interests cannot be dismissed as an unfortunate public-relations arrangement. It goes to the integrity of the environment in which national policy was discussed, communicated and defended.

There is currently no public evidence proving that Netanyahu personally received Qatari money or acted as an agent of Doha. There is therefore no responsible basis for declaring that Qatar “operated” Netanyahu.

But that is also the wrong threshold by which to judge political responsibility.
Foreign influence does not require a head of government to receive instructions from a foreign intelligence officer. It can work through advisers, access, financial relationships, media campaigns, information flows and the framing of choices around political leaders. Democratic systems protect themselves from foreign influence precisely because decision-making environments matter, not only the formal decisions eventually signed by the person at the top.

A prime minister is responsible for that environment.
Netanyahu cannot reasonably claim ownership of Israel’s diplomatic achievements, intelligence successes and military operations when they succeed, while treating every failure surrounding his government as the responsibility of generals, bureaucrats or individual advisers. Leadership cannot operate according to a principle in which success belongs to the leader and failure belongs to everyone around him.

This is the central political judgment that Israel has avoided since October 7. Netanyahu did not single-handedly cause the massacre. But he presided over the strategic conception that collapsed. His governments treated Qatari money as an instrument for managing Gaza. People in his political circle are now at the center of an investigation concerning alleged relationships with Qatar. And a new report claims that a warning about Sinwar reached Netanyahu personally shortly before the attack and was not transmitted to Israel’s senior security officials.

These are separate matters and must be investigated separately. Yet together they reveal a pattern that cannot be waved away as a collection of unrelated mistakes by subordinates. They concern the judgment, management and political culture of the government led by Benjamin Netanyahu.

That is why Israel’s continued failure to establish a conventional state commission of inquiry is so serious.

Nearly three years after the massacre, the country still lacks the independent mechanism normally expected to investigate a disaster of this magnitude. Instead, political alternatives have been promoted for determining how such an inquiry would be composed. Whatever the procedural arguments for those proposals, they suffer from an obvious weakness: the political leadership whose conduct must be investigated should not exercise decisive influence over the body investigating it.

An inquiry worthy of October 7 must have the power and independence to examine everyone: Netanyahu, his cabinet, the IDF, the Shin Bet, the Mossad, intelligence assessments, government policy toward Hamas, the role of Qatari money in Gaza and the decisions that preserved the strategic conception until it collapsed.

It must now also establish the truth about the reported UAE warning.  The public deserves a definitive account of what Mohammed bin Zayed told Netanyahu, what Netanyahu understood, what he did with that information and why it did not reach the senior security leadership.

Qatargate requires the same seriousness. The investigation must follow the money, communications and chains of influence wherever they lead. It should neither protect political allies nor manufacture guilt in advance. Its purpose must be to establish whether a foreign state succeeded in purchasing influence dangerously close to the center of Israeli power.

Netanyahu will ask Israelis for another mandate when they vote on October 27. Elections matter enormously, but an election is not an investigation. A ballot can decide who governs Israel next; it cannot determine what happened before October 7, erase evidence, establish innocence or substitute for accountability.

That distinction is especially important now.

The political argument surrounding Netanyahu has too often been reduced to two absolutist camps: those who regard every allegation against him as proof of criminal betrayal, and those who regard every investigation as another political conspiracy. Both approaches allow the real issue to escape scrutiny.

Israel does not need to prove that Netanyahu was a Qatari agent in order to conclude that something went profoundly wrong under his leadership.

It is already legitimate to say that the policy of managing Hamas through deterrence, economic incentives and Qatari involvement failed catastrophically. It is legitimate to regard alleged Qatari financial relationships involving people close to the prime minister as a national-security scandal worthy of exhaustive investigation. And if the latest report about the UAE warning is confirmed, it is legitimate to hold Netanyahu personally accountable for failing to ensure that potentially critical information reached the security establishment.

This is not a criminal verdict. It is a political judgment.

In a democracy, political responsibility begins long before criminal responsibility. A leader does not need to be convicted of treason to have failed his country. He does not need to have taken foreign money personally to be responsible for allowing foreign interests dangerously close to his office. And he does not need to have known the precise hour of an attack to be accountable for what he did with warnings that reached him.

Nearly three years after October 7, Netanyahu has still not accepted responsibility commensurate with the scale of the failure that occurred under his leadership.

That is the central fact Israel should confront before it votes again.

The country has already paid an unbearable price for a system that mistook assumptions for strategy and temporary quiet for security. What Israel cannot afford now is to mistake another election for accountability.