لحظة ادراك

 

Gulf Money at the Service of Netanyahu’s Agenda

(Netanyahu Replaces Qatar’s Suitcases with Abu Dhabi’s Money)

One of the strangest paradoxes of the Middle East is that money does not merely change its recipient; it can also change the map on which that recipient moves.

What was yesterday a channel for de-escalation may become tomorrow a channel for reshaping power. What was presented as humanitarian assistance may, under the pressure of politics, necessity, and collapse, become part of a much larger design—one whose visible portion is limited to what reaches people’s hands, while the rest of the picture remains behind closed doors.

To put it plainly and without ambiguity, Benjamin Netanyahu responded to his political opponents who accused him of financing Hamas after he allowed Qatari cash-filled suitcases to reach Hamas leaders on more than one occasion after October 7 by saying:

“I did that to prevent the establishment of a Palestinian state.”

In other words, empowering Hamas to govern Gaza obstructed Palestinian, Arab, and international efforts to reunify the two parts of the homeland.

And this is where the new story begins.

Gaza, which has lived for decades between blockade, division, poverty, and wars, now finds itself facing one of the strangest political paradoxes imaginable: yesterday’s enemies are sitting—or are said to be sitting—at the same table.

Mohammed Dahlan and Hamas.

A long history of hostility, a memory filled with blood, and political and ideological distances that once seemed impossible to bridge. And then, suddenly, talk of an alliance, an electoral list, or joint political arrangements becomes part of the landscape.

Have the convictions changed?

Or have the circumstances changed?

Or is Gaza itself what has changed, forcing its rivals to rearrange their alignments?

Perhaps the answer is closer to the third possibility.

Politics knows neither permanent friends nor permanent enemies; it knows permanent interests. And when a society reaches the bottom of the barrel of need, politics begins to resemble a marketplace, and money becomes a player no less important than weapons—this time through the ballot box.

From Doha to Abu Dhabi

For many years, Qatari funding played an important role in Gaza, including aid and financial transfers that entered the Strip under arrangements approved by Israel and involving regional and international actors to varying degrees.

This path had two faces.

The first was humanitarian, and cannot simply be denied despite all the suspicions surrounding it: money reached a besieged society, helped pay the salaries of Hamas employees, eased suffering, and financed basic needs.

The other face was far more complicated: political.

When the economy of an entire society becomes heavily dependent on financial flows coming from outside its political system, money becomes part of the architecture of the conflict, even if that was not its stated purpose.

And here we must ask the question everyone has long avoided:

Did the arrangements surrounding Qatari money help manage the Palestinian division rather than end it?

It would be overly simplistic to claim that Qatari money caused the events of October 7. Reality is far more complicated than that. But it can be argued that the system through which Gaza was managed in the preceding years contributed to keeping the division alive, allowing a political reality separate from the West Bank to persist instead of addressing the root of the problem: Palestinian division itself.

And so everyone managed the crisis, while no one addressed its roots.

Israel managed the blockade.

Qatar managed part of the funding.

Egypt managed the crossings and mediation.

Hamas managed Gaza.

The Palestinian Authority managed the West Bank.

And the world managed its statements of concern.

As for the ordinary Palestinian, he managed his life somewhere between all of them.

Until October 7 arrived—and the entire table collapsed with everything on it.

Netanyahu and the Window Opened After the War

Then came the war.

And everything changed.

After years of relying on multilateral arrangements, Israel found itself facing a devastated Gaza Strip, a population in need of food, medicine, and reconstruction, and a political system that could not simply be restored to what it had been before the war.

At the same time, Benjamin Netanyahu’s government adopted extremely stringent positions toward the activities of a number of international organizations in Gaza and imposed broad restrictions on the delivery of aid and humanitarian work.

And here, as always happens in the Middle East, when one player closes a window, another looks for a door.

Could Abu Dhabi have opened that door?

The United Arab Emirates has the money, international relationships, and capacity to operate in environments where many Palestinian actors cannot move freely.

From this perspective, we can understand why Gulf money now appears to be part of the discussion about the shape of the Gaza to come, rather than merely about feeding the Gaza that exists today.

That is a profound difference.

Money that buys food helps a human being survive.

But money that rebuilds institutions, finances administration, supports elites, and creates alliances can become part of reshaping the political system itself.

Dahlan and Hamas: An Alliance of the Impossible?

This is where Mohammed Dahlan enters the picture.

The man who was once one of Hamas’s fiercest adversaries in Gaza is now associated with talk of new political arrangements.

What an extraordinary paradox!

Those who once stood on opposite sides of the trench may now find themselves standing on the same bridge.

But why?

Because the trench itself is no longer what it once was.

Hamas emerged from the war facing a different reality.

Dahlan is no longer the man Gaza knew years ago.

The region has changed.

The United States has changed.

Israeli priorities have changed.

And the Palestinian question itself has shifted—from:

Who will govern Gaza?

to:

How can Gaza remain livable at all?

And this is where strange alliances become possible.

But there is something we should not overlook:

An electoral alliance is not necessarily a full political alliance.

Bringing Hamas together with figures or currents associated with Dahlan, or with left-wing and independent forces, may simply be an attempt to create a broad electoral umbrella. It does not necessarily mean there is a fully developed project for governing Gaza.

The difference between the two is enormous.

Is There Israeli Approval?

Here we enter the most sensitive territory.

Could this process have received an Israeli green light?

Perhaps.

Is there enough publicly available evidence to assert that Israel has endorsed a Dahlan-Hamas alliance?

Not enough to turn possibility into fact.

But politics is not read solely through official statements.

Sometimes it is read through what the parties do not object to.

If a political project fundamentally contradicts Israeli interests, it would be natural to expect Israeli resistance to it.

But if the project begins moving forward without a direct collision, that does not prove approval. It does, however, open a legitimate question:

Does Israel see this path as a threat… or as an opportunity?

That question is more important than searching for an Israeli signature that does not exist on paper.

Is Gaza Replacing Qatari Money with Emirati Money?

Here lies the paradox that gives the title its force.

The country providing the money may change.

But if the system of dependency itself does not change, then very little will.

Qatari or Emirati money is not the problem in itself.

The problem begins when the Palestinian becomes the recipient of someone else’s political project rather than the owner of his own.

When he eats with other people’s money, rebuilds with other people’s money, runs his institutions with other people’s money, and then discovers years later that the decision itself has become dependent on whoever pays.

This is not a question of Qatar or the UAE.

It is a question of Palestinian political independence.

Someone who buys bread from abroad does not sell his homeland.

But someone who sells his decision in exchange for bread has entered an entirely different territory.

Al-Mashharawi and Fatah

In this context, the conditions that Samir al-Mashharawi is said to have presented to the Fatah leadership in Cairo, if the reported details are accurate, should not be read in isolation from the broader picture.

Electoral conditions are not merely technical details.

They reflect the larger question:

Who wants to enter the new Palestinian political system? Who wants to reshape it? And who wants to be pushed out of it?

Here, Fatah faces a historic test.

If all the forces that oppose it are capable of coming together—from Hamas to reformist currents to the left—then the problem is no longer simply its opponents.

The problem may lie in Fatah’s own ability to reinvent itself.

Politics has little mercy for parties that content themselves with saying:

We are the holders of legitimacy.

Legitimacy that is not renewed gradually becomes a memory.

People of Gaza… Do Not Trade One Chain for Another

But more dangerous than all of this is the ordinary citizen.

The Gazan searching for a home.

For a salary.

For a school.

For a hospital.

For water.

For electricity.

For a window through which aircraft do not fly.

This person does not care much about who brought the money.

Qatar or the UAE.

He wants to live.

And we should not blame him.

But we must warn him.

Need must never become a gateway to taking control of the future.

People of Gaza…

Do not replace one source of money with another.

Replace dependency with independence.

It does not matter whether the money comes from Doha, Abu Dhabi, or Washington.

What matters is: What does that money want from you?

Who decides where it goes?

Who decides who governs?

Who decides the shape of the political system?

Who writes the conditions of the future?

The devil does not always come with horns and flames.

Sometimes he comes in an aid vehicle.

Sometimes in a suitcase of money.

Sometimes in a reconstruction project.

And sometimes in an electoral list that appears patriotic on the surface while, beneath it, forms part of a much larger arrangement.

Conclusion

The Palestinians are not being asked to reject Arab money.

Nor are they being asked to reject the UAE.

Or Qatar.

Or any Arab country extending a helping hand to Gaza.

What they must reject is allowing assistance to become guardianship, guardianship to become dependency, and dependency to become a means of reshaping Palestinian political identity.

If Qatari money contributed, as part of a broader system, to entrenching the reality of division rather than ending it, then Emirati money must not become a new version of the same equation, no matter how the names and faces may change.

Gaza does not merely need a change of financier.

Gaza needs a change in the equation itself.

It needs a Palestinian authority that derives its legitimacy from its people, not from foreign checks.

It needs elections in which ballot boxes are not merely boxes of wonder from which maps drawn in other capitals emerge.

It needs reconstruction that rebuilds the stones without leaving the human being a hostage.

And it needs a national project that does not ask:

“Who is paying?”

before it asks:

“Who is deciding?”

The problem is not that money comes from Doha and goes to Abu Dhabi.

The problem is that, after all this bloodshed, Gaza might remain waiting for someone to pay before it knows how to live, and waiting for someone to pay before it knows who will govern it.

And only then does the truly frightening question emerge:

Is Netanyahu replacing Qatari money with Emirati money… or are the Palestinians simply replacing one name with another, while the decision remains in the hands of others?

Because the most dangerous thing that could happen after all this devastation is not for Gaza to lose another war.

It is to win the battle for survival, only to lose its right to choose its future.