TIME has published previously undisclosed documents revealing how successive Israeli governments helped facilitate and sustain Qatari humanitarian aid payments to Gaza, despite publicly criticising the programme.
In an exclusive long-read published on Sunday, Documents Show How Israel Steered Qatari Payments to Gaza, TIME journalist Eric Cortellessa details how senior Israeli security officials privately backed Qatar’s aid payments to Gaza, with letters to Qatari leaders showing Israel’s direct role in the programme.
The documents challenge the portrayal by Israeli prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and other Israeli leaders of the payments as a Qatari effort that fed Hamas. According to TIME, by 2012 Netanyahu’s government had approved a system giving Israel a direct role: delivering food and medical supplies, deciding which Palestinian families qualified for aid, and disbursing funds. Under that system, Israel vetted recipients and oversaw distribution, with money moving through the World Food Programme.
According to TIME, their role in the programme was “more extensive than Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has publicly acknowledged”.
TIME piece highlights that the funding was indeed “designated for humanitarian assistance, fuel, and government salaries”, noting that Qatar had requested “formal documentation that the arrangement agreed was meant to provide relief to citizens”.
The article notes that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government “helped to facilitate these Qatari payments to Gaza”, beginning in 2012 and having accumulated to over $1.1 billion by 2018.
Israel has repeatedly accused Qatar of financing Hamas.
In an interview with i24NEWS on 5 September, Netanyahu boasted of bombing Qatar. In the same interview, he defended the Qatari payments to Gaza as humanitarian and said Israel’s own security agencies, Mossad and the Shin Bet, had recommended them.
Qatar has rejected the claims, saying its assistance was intended for Palestinian civilians and delivered through mechanisms coordinated with Israel and international partners.
Speaking to CNN’s Christiane Amanpour in New York on 27 September, Qatar’s Prime Minister and Minister of Foreign Affairs Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al Thani said no Qatari money entered Gaza without the “full coordination and consent” of the United Nations and Israeli government, rejecting claims that Qatar’s funding reached Hamas’s military wing.
“There has no single penny that has flown into Gaza without the full coordination and consent by the United Nations and the Israeli government,” said Sheikh Mohammed.
The Sunday’s TIME piece quotes a spokesperson for Qatar’s International Media Office as highlighting that “all of Qatar’s financial assistance in Gaza has been directed to Palestinian citizens through mechanisms coordinated with the Israeli authorities and international partners”.
Qatar’s International Media Office statement from 19 September clearly stated that “all financial assistance, as well as goods such as food, medicine and fuel, passed through Israel before entering Gaza”.
“Nothing was delivered directly by Qatar; we provided the aid, while delivery was carried out by the United Nations’ organizations in coordination with the Israeli authorities. If any funding reached Hamas, as alleged by individuals and groups with political agendas against Qatar, the responsibility lies with Israel, which oversaw the delivery and created the mechanism,” the statement added.
According to TIME, the extent of Israel’s cooperation with the payments was reflected in a 2020 letter from Yossi Cohen, then director of Mossad, Israel’s intelligence agency, to Qatar’s Amir Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani.
“It is indeed a great opportunity to express our gratitude and appreciation for the humanitarian aid efforts that the State of Qatar has provided the last few years to the Gaza Strip,” Cohen wrote.
“Undoubtedly, these humanitarian efforts have played a crucial role in improving the humanitarian situation within the Gaza Strip, and ensuring stability and safety in the region,” Cohen write in the letter.
The TIME article also highlights that critics have long argued that Netanyahu sought to “sustain Hamas rule in Gaza to keep the Palestinians divided”, while Israel pursued normalisation with the Arab world without resolving the Palestinian question.
The piece continues referencing statements from former Israeli defense officials highlighting Netanyahu’s “central” role in the agreed payment process, while noting that Israeli officials would “denounce the payments in public, then privately ask Doha to renew them”.
It adds that the agreement was formalized through a trilateral mechanism in October 2018, involving Qatar, Israel, and the United Nations, designed to administer the aid with international and Israeli oversight.
On 2 October 2018, Qatar and Israel, together with the United Nations, signed an agreement to finance fuel deliveries into Gaza.
According to TIME, Qatar signed another agreement in August 2021, committing $40 million to a cash assistance programme that would provide nearly 100,000 Palestinian households with $100 a month for four months.
The U.S. officials were also involved in the discussions.
A diplomat briefed on the process told TIME that Qatar wanted Washington to understand exactly how the system operated, fearing Israel might later accuse Doha of financing Hamas without acknowledging its own role in the arrangement.
Under the system, Qatar funded fuel and electricity purchased from Israel to increase the number of hours of power available in Gaza, in a process coordinated with Israeli security services, according to U.S. and Israeli officials cited by TIME.
Qatar also transferred money through the United Nations for projects in the Strip and provided monthly payments of $100 to some of Gaza’s poorest families.
Israel vetted the recipients and oversaw the distribution mechanism, according to diplomats familiar with the arrangement.
The funds were transferred through the World Food Programme, with eligible families notified by text message before collecting their assistance at designated locations.
“If the money ever got in the wrong hands, it was because of the Israelis,” the diplomat told TIME, “because they were the ones overseeing the whole thing.”
The investigative piece by TIME notes that Israel’s National Security Council “urged Qatari officials to maintain the payments”, despite the Israeli government’s public criticism of the agreement, which continued under later Prime Minister Bennett’s tenure despite prior objections.
In July 2019, according to one letter, Qatar notified the Netanyahu government that it was transferring $6 million to 20,000 beneficiaries in Gaza, with each receiving $300.
TIME writes that it is unknown how many of those beneficiaries, chosen by Israel, were connected to Hamas or had family members who belonged to the group.
In 2020, as the coronavirus pandemic swept through Gaza, R. L. Maoz, a member of Netanyahu’s National Security Council, urged Qatari officials to maintain the payments despite the Israeli government’s public criticism.
“We ask that Qatar’s financial assistance not be transferred through mediators or countries other than the ambassador, Mohammed Al-Emadi,” Maoz wrote, referring to the chairman of the Qatari Committee for the Reconstruction of Gaza.
“We greatly appreciate your cooperation and open discourse to safeguard stability and security in the region and to bring our countries and peoples closer together,” Maoz added.
According to TIME, the programme continued after Netanyahu left office, despite his successor Naftali Bennett having been among its fiercest critics.
After taking office in 2021, Bennett ended the delivery of cash-filled suitcases but maintained the broader flow of Qatari assistance to Gaza, TIME reported.
People familiar with discussions over the policy told TIME that Bennett’s earlier objections were intended for his domestic political audience. “There’s no issue,” an Israeli representative told a Biden administration envoy, according to an official present at the discussion. “We want to continue with it as is.”
According to TIME, Mossad director David Barnea travelled to Doha two weeks before the 7 October 2023 attacks and asked Qatar to renew its funding for Gaza, as The New York Times reported in December 2023.
Qatari officials agreed but warned that it would be the final renewal. Barnea requested a further two months, arguing that continued assistance to Gaza’s civilians gave Hamas something to lose and provided Israel with leverage over the group, according to officials familiar with the discussions. The two sides could then reassess Hamas’s conduct and develop a more sustainable mechanism for delivering aid.
However, the arrangement did not reach that stage.
Following Hamas’s 7 October 2023 Operation Al-Aqsa Flood, the Qatari aid programme that successive Israeli governments had helped establish, modify and maintain for years came to an end, TIME reported.
The TIME piece concludes with noting that Qatar today continues to work with the US and wider international partners on a framework to “restore basic services “ in Gaza.
The ceasefire reached in January 2025 proved temporary, with Israel resuming large-scale bombardment of Gaza less than two months later. Israeli attacks and widespread destruction have continued since.
More than 74,000 Palestinians have been reported killed in Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza since 7 October 2023, but three years on, the death toll is still not final.