Middle East Crisis: Blinken Calls Some Hamas Changes to Cease-Fire Proposal Unacceptable
www.nytimes.com
The secretary of state said the U.S. would keep pushing Israel and Hamas ‘on an urgent basis’ to reach a deal.

Speaking at a news conference in Doha, Qatar, alongside Qatar’s prime minister and minister of foreign affairs, Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al Thani, Mr. Blinken said that “a deal was on the table that was virtually identical” to one that Hamas put forward on May 6.

At some point, he said, “you have to question whether they’re proceeding in good faith or not.”

  • BlameThePeacock@lemmy.caEnglish
    0·
    5 months ago

    Always ask yourself, “Where’s the money coming from.”

    Hamas is not being funded by Palestinians. Palestinians are broke as fuck.

    Hamas is being funded by neighboring countries, who want to eliminate Israel. The same reason those countries invaded Israel the day after the British protectorate ended.

    • givesomefucks@lemmy.worldEnglish
      01·
      5 months ago

      Hamas is being funded by neighboring countries

      Cough

      For years, the Qatari government had been sending millions of dollars a month into the Gaza Strip — money that helped prop up the Hamas government there. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel not only tolerated those payments, he had encouraged them.

      During his meetings in September with the Qatari officials, according to several people familiar with the secret discussions, the Mossad chief, David Barnea, was asked a question that had not been on the agenda: Did Israel want the payments to continue?

      Mr. Netanyahu’s government had recently decided to continue the policy, so Mr. Barnea said yes. The Israeli government still welcomed the money from Doha.

      Allowing the payments — billions of dollars over roughly a decade — was a gamble by Mr. Netanyahu that a steady flow of money would maintain peace in Gaza, the eventual launching point of the Oct. 7 attacks, and keep Hamas focused on governing, not fighting.

      https://www.nytimes.com/2023/12/10/world/middleeast/israel-qatar-money-prop-up-hamas.html

      Cough cough

      Mr Levy - who was head of economic warfare in the Mossad, Israel’s spy agency, until 2016 - says he told Mr Netanyahu many times that Israel had the means to crush Hamas, which controls Gaza, “by using only financial tools”.

      Mr Levy says he never got a response to his proposal from Mr Netanyahu. When asked if he considered there was a connection between Mr Netanyahu’s alleged reluctance to deal with Hamas’s finances and the 7 October attack, Mr Levy is unequivocal.

      “Yes, of course,” he says. “There is a very good chance that… we would [have] prevent[ed] a lot of the money” that had gone into Gaza, and that “the monster that Hamas built probably [wouldn’t be] like the same monster that we faced on October 7th.”

      https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-68318856