The 2018 bit with Qatar financing Hamas would have been during Trump’s administration; I can’t see how Bibi would have been pressured to cater to Hamas then, at least by us.
What evidence is there that Netanyahu’s toleration of Hamas was forced upon him by the West, as compared to being an actual government policy aimed at keeping Gaza and the West Bank at political cross-purposes to weaken nationalist sentiments amongst the Palestinians as a whole?
Presidents come and go. The bureaucrats running the US Goverment do not
https://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-4969105,00.html
Netanyahu says Trump issued no ‘blank check’ to Israel
Speaking during a Likud party meeting on Monday afternoon, the Israeli premier insists that while relations were warm between the US and Israel, Jerusalem did not have carte blanche to act in any way it pleased; acknowledges ‘great understanding’ of Israel’s position by the US, but urges Likud members act ‘diligently and responsibly.’
This specific phrase is as old as war. I have no idea if or to what extent Israel or the West or both were forcing the divisions. But, the fact is that the Palestinian political divisions exist, and that made them weaker and internationally less important politically. So it would probably be natural to just let the division exist. It is not, per se, Israel's problem that the Palestinians can't get their own house in order and why would Israel try - they tried and tried for over 30 years since Oslo. You could argue this war is a consequence of not trying, but really there is nothing Israel could do about people with the ideology of Hamas. What are you going to negotiate with a person who swears to kill you, the method of your death?
Of course, now, things have to change. And that means change in the future too. Ultimately though nobody can resolve the Palestinian problem but the Palestinians themselves. We, the west and Arab world and Israel can help but the status quo of just giving them cash without accountability has to end.
Maybe the recent revalations that the Key to the Palestinian Question (or so called Open Prision) are in the Hands of Hamas.
MANY OF THE HIGHEST PEOPLE IN HAMAS LIVE IN QATAR.
THEY re no where near the fighting..