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Paul Ronzheimer is the deputy editor-in-chief of BILD and a senior journalist reporting for Axel Springer, the parent company of POLITICO.<\/em><\/p>\n Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin\u00a0Netanyahu\u00a0has vehemently denied accusations he allowed Qatar to fund and strengthen the militant group Hamas in order to divide Palestinians into rival political camps, slamming the claims as \u201cridiculous.\u201d<\/p>\n Netanyahu\u2019s opponents in Israel argue his government spent years actively boosting Hamas in Gaza by allowing Qatar to channel\u00a0hundreds of millions of dollars to the coastal enclave in a risky game of \u201cdivide-and-rule,\u201d that was meant to play the Islamist militants from Hamas off against the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank. <\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s a big lie that I wanted to build [up] Hamas. Ridiculous,\u201d Netanyahu\u00a0said in an interview with Axel Springer, POLITICO\u2019s parent company. \u201cYou don\u2019t go to war three times with Hamas or do major military operations if you want to build up Hamas.\u201d<\/p>\n Former Prime Minister Ehud Olmert is a leading example of a politician who takes that version of events with a pinch of salt. \u201cIn the last 15 years, Israel did everything to downgrade the Palestinian Authority and to boost Hamas,\u201d he previously told POLITICO. \u201cGaza was on the brink of collapse because they had no resources, they had no money, and the PA refused to give Hamas any money. Bibi saved them. Bibi made a deal with Qatar and they started to move millions and millions of dollars to Gaza.\u201d<\/p>\n Most incriminatingly, Netanyahu himself\u00a0said in\u00a02019\u00a0at a Likud party conference: \u201cAnyone who wants to prevent the establishment of a Palestinian state needs to support strengthening Hamas.\u201d<\/p>\n Netanyahu on Tuesday, however, dismissed those charges, claiming he only allowed Qatari money to flow into Gaza to avoid a humanitarian catastrophe, not to strengthen the arm of the administration there. <\/p>\n \u201cWe wanted to avoid a civilian humanitarian collapse \u2014 disease, rampant hunger and other things that would have created an impossible humanitarian situation,\u201d he said. \u201cThat\u2019s why successive Israeli governments allowed this money to go in, not in order to strengthen Hamas. We didn\u2019t want to strengthen Hamas at all. We wanted to weaken it and degrade its capabilities as far as we could.\u201d<\/p>\n Israel and Hamas are on the fifth day of a fragile truce \u2014 which has so far allowed for the release of 69 of the 240 hostages taken by the militant group during its October 7 attack. <\/p>\n But all eyes are now turned to the \u201cday after\u201d and what the end of the truce will mean for Israel and Gaza.<\/p>\n Netanyahu said Israel would keep its side of the truce as long as Hamas keeps its, but he noted that Hamas would still have to be destroyed after the cease-fire ends.<\/p>\n \u201cMake no mistake: we shall continue our military efforts to eradicate Hamas, because Hamas says very clearly that it will repeat the savagery over and over and over,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n And after Israel has defeated Hamas, he said, the goal will be twofold: to de-militarize and de-radicalize Gaza.<\/p>\n \u201cOur goal is to make sure that Gaza does not revert to the kind of horrible threat it was to Israel before the war,\u201d Netanyahu said.<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n