The Israeli Shin Bet intelligence agency concluded that policies of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu led to Hamas’s successful attack. 

The report released last week explained that Netanyahu allowing Qatar to send funds to Hamas propped up the Palestinian group and paved the way for the October 7 attack. It explained. Netanyahu’s “policy of quiet that allowed Hamas’s massive build-up; the flow of Qatari funds and their delivery to Hamas’s military win, [and] the ongoing erosion of Israeli deterrence.”

The long-time Israeli Prime Minister has believed that propping up Hamas in Gaza was key to never having to negotiate a two-state solution by keeping the Palestinians in the Strip and West Bank. 

Likud spokesman Jonatan Urich, one of Netanyahu’s media advisers, once bragged that one of Netanyahu’s key successes was disconnecting Gaza from the West Bank, both politically and conceptually. “[Netanyahu] basically smashed the vision of the Palestinian state in these two places… some of the achievement is related to the Qatari money reaching Hamas each month.”

Tel Aviv even pressured Doha to give the cash to Hamas. Netanyahu has previously dispatched high officials, such as Mossad chief Yosi Cohen, to Doha “[begging] the Qataris to keep funneling money into Hamas” as Avigdor Lieberman, the former defense minister put it.

“The effort to cope with a terrorist organisation on the basis of intelligence and defence, while refraining from offensive initiative [and] the cumulative weight of violations on the Temple Mount,” the report released Tuesday added. 

What Tel Aviv refers to as the Temple Mount is the al-Aqsa Mosque and compound. Prior to the Hamas attack, then-National Security Minister Itmar Ben Gvir was encouraging Jewish prayer at the site and cracking down on Palestinian worship. Hamas dubbed its October 7 attack “Al-Aqsa Flood.”

On Thursday, reports surfaced that Netanyahu was attempting to push out the head of the Shin Bet, Ronen Bar. Sources said Netanyahu has been pushing Nar to resign, arguing he “failed completely in everything that pertains to how the Shin Bet coped with the Hamas organisation in general and specifically to the event of October 7″

On Monday, the Prime Minister’s office confirmed the reports saying, “the one who appoints the head of the Shin Bet is the government, and not the sitting Shin Bet chief.”

The Shin Bet report also admitted to failures on its part. “Had [Shin Bet] acted differently in the years preceding the (Hamas) attack and on the night of the attack… the massacre would have been prevented.” It continued, “This is not the standard that we expected from ourselves and the public from us.”

The conclusions drawn by Shin Bet followed inquiries by the Israeli military released recently that reviewed its failures on October 7. The IDF concluded on the morning of the attack, that the military was substantially underprepared for the Hamas assault.