Former Shin Bet director Yoram Cohen on Tuesday slammed consecutive Israeli governments run by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu with facilitating Qatari funding of Hamas as being a deep strategic source of the October 7 failure to stop Hamas's southern invasion.
Speaking at Reichman University, while Cohen agreed that the IDF and the Shin Bet failed their operational missions to anticipate the invasion in advance and to thwart it, he said that the larger problems were strategic and came from the government.
According to Cohen, the government directly or indirectly (not mentioning Netanyahu by name, but referring to his governments) propped up Qatar and Hamas as alternatives to the Palestinian Authority when both were being boycotted by much of the rest of the Arab world.
The former Shin Bet chief said that anyone today would say that helping a third country fund Hezbollah because of the economic crisis in Lebanon would be a colossal error and that the same was true of allowing Qatar to fund Hamas, even if the strategy was well-intentioned to avoid the economic crisis which partially led to the 2014 Gaza conflict.
Netanyahu-led governments failed to kill top Hamas leaders
Cohen said that the Netanyahu-led governments also failed to take any initiative to eliminate top Hamas leaders, only attacking such leaders in response to moves by Hamas.
Regarding "The Day After" the IDF withdraws from Gaza, Cohen said that it should be a mix of local Palestinian officials, Arab state-allied countries, Western countries, and also the Palestinian Authority.
His validating integration of the PA was highly significant because Cohen is a major critic of the PA and has said it cannot be granted security powers over its territory.
However, he still said it could be necessary to have the PA involved, something which Netanyahu has consistently rejected.