Last week it seemed that Israel was inching closer to a solution that would end the conflict with Gaza.
On Thursday, the United Nations and Qatar signed an agreement for the resumption of Qatari cash payments to needy families in Gaza. According to the deal, Qatar will hand out each month $100 to some 100,000 families.
Israeli officials said that a new mechanism was created to oversee the process and ensure that the money goes to the right people, not to Hamas.
Despite the fact that it was an agreement that was signed by the UN and Qatar, in Israel the enthusiasm was felt.
Defense Minister Benny Gantz posted a video in which he emphasized Israel’s role in facilitating this agreement and stated that it was part of a new equation Israel had set after the recent round of violence in May.
“At the end of Operation Guardian of the Walls, I declared that the status quo will not continue,” Gantz said in the video. “We will not tolerate any threat to our sovereignty.”
However, as we all witnessed this past weekend, this concept collapsed less than 48 hours after the agreement was announced.
Hundreds of Palestinian protesters entered an area near the border on Saturday, stormed the fence – and one armed protester shot and critically wounded border policeman St.-Sgt. Barel Shmueli.
So why are Israeli politicians so keen on defending this Qatari money deal?
Foreign Minister Yair Lapid said in an interview with Channel 12 on Thursday that “under our watch, there are not suitcases full of cash being transferred to Gaza.” Anchor Danny Kushmaro sarcastically replied: “So it’s in credit cards.”
And that reveals the sad truth – Israel can’t really oversee the money once it gets into the Gaza Strip.
Hamas, a brutal organization that sends its citizens to confront the IDF on the border and then return injured, will find a way to get its hands on the Qatari money.
Unfortunately, despite the 16 years since Israel unilaterally withdrew from Gaza, Israel still does not have a clear strategy on what it wants to do there. The government does not know what it wants to achieve, or what it wants as a proper solution. Instead, it lets other entities, such as Qatar, get a foothold in the Strip.
If Israel sees the reconstruction of Gaza as an important goal, why doesn’t it act on its own? If Israel thinks that economic prosperity will help reduce conflict, why doesn’t it launch a comprehensive plan that it can actually control?
Allowing the Qataris in again seems to be no more than improvising. Besides, why let Qatar – a country that supports the Muslim brotherhood – become a dominant player in our backyard?
After the war in May, Shimrit Meir, then a Yediot Aharonot columnist and now a senior diplomatic adviser to Prime Minister Naftali Bennett, dedicated a section in her weekly column with the headline “Stop Qatar.”
“If there’s one clear conclusion that should be obvious right now it is that if we go back, somehow, to the route of a resolution in Gaza, Qatar can’t be part of it. The Qatari foreign affairs policy could be summed up to this: igniting conflicts and then helping to solve them.... On one hand, they back Hamas and operate the Al Jazeera incitement machine to serve it, and on the other hand, they make themselves those who buy Israel peace by handing Hamas dollars.”
Meir then stressed the importance of looking for other regional sponsors while Gaza is still at the heart of international media coverage.
It appears that the new government, just like the old one, chose the option of “managing the conflict” instead of finding a way to solve it.
Whereas in the West Bank this tactic seems to work fine, the war in May showed us that Hamas’s capabilities are only growing as time passes.
It is unclear how another shipment of Qatari money will produce different results, and as of now, the clock is ticking toward another round of rocket barrages.
It is time for Israel’s leaders to rethink the way the country deals with Gaza, and to look for a stabler solution.