Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu approved multimillion-dollar defense deals between Israel’s top defense companies and Qatar, according to a Tuesday report from the Walla news outlet.
The unsourced report came days after the publication of documents apparently seized by Israel in Gaza that reportedly show Qatar’s intense collaboration with the Palestinian terror group Hamas over the course of several years.
It was the latest revelation of apparent top-tier cooperation between Israel and Qatar, which does not have diplomatic ties with Israel and has funded Hamas as well as hosting its political leaders.
Elbit, Rafael Advanced Defense Systems, and the state-owned Israel Aerospace Industries all reportedly received authorization for major deals with the wealthy Gulf country.
Sales included weapons, ammunition, cyber technology, and advanced weapons, the report said.
According to the report, Elbit agreed to deals with Qatar worth more than $100 million; Rafael inked contracts worth tens of millions of dollars; and IAI executives visited Doha more than 20 times and held a daylong meeting with a high-level Qatari delegation at the firm’s headquarters in Israel.
The deals were said to have been given the green light by Netanyahu, the Defense Ministry, and the IDF.
Walla did not specify exactly what items were included in the deals.
The Prime Minister’s Office did not respond to The Times of Israel’s request for comment on the report.
“Elbit Systems’ activity in the international market is subject to the guidelines and restrictions of the Israeli Ministry of Defense, and accordingly, the company operates under these guidelines,” Elbit said.
“Rafael does not provide information about business partners,” the company told Walla. “Rafael has operated and operates according to the most stringent international standards, with regard to the compliance of its business partners and in accordance with the Export Control and Licensing Law.”
Earlier this week, Channel 12 news reported that documents taken from Gaza during the war revealed that in May 2021, immediately after the conclusion of an 11-day conflict between Israel and Hamas, then-Hamas politburo leader Ismail Haniyeh told the terror group’s leader in Gaza Yahya Sinwar that Qatari emir Tamim bin Hamad bin Khalifa Al Thani had privately “agreed on discreet financial support” for the group’s “resistance” efforts.
In addition to Doha’s cash, Qatari intelligence officials reportedly met with a Hamas representative at one point — the report did not provide a date — to discuss supervising special training units for Hamas fighters on military bases in Qatar and Turkey, and for the integration of Syrian Palestinians who fled to Lebanon amid the Syrian civil war into Hamas’s Lebanese battalions.
According to Channel 12 news, the documents showed that the payments, which were transferred with Israel’s blessing, were significant enough that in December 2019, Haniyeh told Qatar’s Foreign Minister Mohammed bin Hamad Al Thani that the Gulf state’s cash to Gaza was “Hamas’s main artery.”
Qatar’s International Media Office issued a statement calling the documents “fabricated,” and asserting that the Channel 12 report was another “attempt to sow tension and division between Qatar and the United States at a crucial stage in our efforts to mediate a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas.”
The reports come as the Prime Minister’s Office is embroiled in the so-called Qatargate affair in which two of Netanyahu’s senior aides are suspected of taking money to spread pro-Qatari messaging to reporters, in order to boost the Gulf state’s image as a mediator in the ongoing Gaza war.
The war was sparked by the October 7, 2023, attack, in which some 5,000 Hamas-led terrorists invaded southern Israel from Gaza, killing some 1,200 people and taking 251 hostages.
A close aide to the prime minister, Jonatan Urich, and a former Netanyahu former military affairs spokesperson, Eli Feldstein, are suspected of multiple offenses tied to their alleged work for a pro-Qatar lobbying firm. They are suspected of contact with a foreign agent and breach of trust, due to what prosecutors believe was their work to improve Doha’s image as a hostage negotiation mediator while simultaneously working as advisers to Netanyahu.
The investigation has broadened, and several former senior security officials are suspected of involvement in helping transfer money from Doha to Urich and Feldstein.
Netanyahu, who is on trial for corruption in a separate case, has not been directly accused in the Qatar affair.