Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was interviewed by the news site Politico in the US and denied the claims that he built up the terrorist organization Hamas for years using Qatari money.
"It's a big lie that I wanted to build up the Hamas. It's ridiculous," Netanyahu said in an interview, "You don't go to war three times with Hamas or do major military operations if you want to build up the Hamas."
Netanyahu also claimed that the Qatari money was allowed to flow to Gaza only to avoid a humanitarian disaster, not to strengthen the government arm there. "We wanted to avoid civilian humanitarian collapse, disease, rampant hunger and other things that would have created an impossible humanitarian situation," he said. "This is why Israeli governments have continuously allowed this money to come in, not to strengthen Hamas. We did not want to strengthen Hamas at all. We wanted to weaken it and damage its capabilities as much as we could."
Netanyahu also stated in the interview, "Make no mistake, we will continue our military efforts to eradicate Hamas, because Hamas says very clearly that it will repeat the atrocities again and again and again," he said, "and after Israel defeats Hamas, the goal will be twofold: the demilitarization and deradicalization of Gaza. Our goal is to make sure that Gaza does not return to be the terrible threat it had been on Israel before the war."
