(Will Porter, Antiwar.com) Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu reportedly held direct talks with a senior Hamas member during the deadly 2014 war in Gaza, according to Israeli media. The dialogue was said to have been arranged “behind the backs of the establishment.”
Reported by the Hebrew-language outlet Walla on Thursday, the backchannel contacts with Hamas occurred during separate negotiations then taking place in Egypt, those led by Israel’s military and security chiefs. The secret talks, however, were reportedly spearheaded in private by businessman Shlomi Fogel, a close associate of Netanyahu. Fogel was said to have facilitated contacts with Ghazi Hamad, a deputy minister in Gaza’s Hamas-led government at the time.
While the Walla report cited a former top official on Israel’s National Security Council, the PM’s office has rejected the allegations, dubbing them as “false briefings that attempt to harm the prime minister.”
Fogel was reportedly involved in previous Qatari cash transfers to Hamas which were given Netanyahu’s blessing, apparently part of a divide-and-conquer strategy to split the Palestinian leadership in Gaza and the West Bank.
The new claims have triggered intense criticism from fellow Israeli officials, among them Gadi Eisenkot and Naftali Bennett, himself a former PM and a cabinet minister under Netanyahu in 2014. He said Netanyahu was “no longer capable of taking care of our security and certainly not of overcoming the enemy.”
This article originally appeared at Antiwar.com.
