Few relationships in the Middle East are as contradictory as the one between Israel and Qatar. In public, the two trade hostile rhetoric. Behind the scenes, they have spent three decades bound together by covert contacts, economic cooperation and overlapping interests, punctuated by sharp diplomatic ruptures and security crises. This week’s allegations of Qatari interference in Israel’s election are only the latest chapter.
Qatargate 2?
Israel and Qatar's secret romance
The emirate that funnelled millions to Hamas with Israeli approval, hosted the terror group's leadership summit on its soil, and now stands accused of election meddling, yet still claims it's only trying to help. Who is Qatar, really?
An early opening
The relationship began in the optimism that followed the 1993 Oslo Accords, when Qatar became one of the first Gulf states to engage openly with Israel. In 1996, Israel opened a trade mission in Doha, and Shimon Peres paid a historic visit to the emirate.
That opening lasted just over a decade. In 2009, in protest over Operation Cast Lead in Gaza, Qatar closed the Israeli mission and cut off formal ties.
Gaza and the cash pipeline
The informal relationship, however, only deepened. In 2012, Hamas moved its political bureau to Doha, and Qatar gradually became the Strip’s main financial lifeline. With the approval of governments led by Benjamin Netanyahu, Qatar transferred hundreds of millions of dollars in cash and fuel into Gaza, a policy intended to preserve calm and head off a humanitarian collapse. Critics in the opposition derided the arrangement as “suitcases of cash,” and after October 7, many came to see it as having helped Hamas build up its strength.
Mediator and host
Since the Hamas attack on October 7, 2023, Qatar has played two roles at once. It has served as the central mediator in negotiations for the release of the hostages, while drawing fierce criticism in Israel for hosting senior Hamas leaders and for the hostile coverage broadcast by its Al Jazeera network.
That tension came to a head in September 2025, when the Israeli Air Force struck a compound in Doha housing senior Hamas officials, without warning Qatar in advance. The strike was an unprecedented breach of Qatari sovereignty. Under pressure from President Donald Trump, Netanyahu apologized to Qatar, and mediation efforts and back-channel contacts were temporarily suspended.
The relationship took an especially damaging turn with the “Qatargate” affair. Shin Bet and police investigations focused on suspicions that two of Netanyahu’s associates, Yonatan Urich and Eli Feldstein, worked covertly to promote Qatar’s interests in exchange for payment. According to the suspicions, the goal was to place messages in the Israeli media casting Qatar as the indispensable mediator, while disparaging Egypt and blunting public criticism of the stalled negotiations with Hamas. Both men have denied wrongdoing.
“Qatargate 2”?
Now a new storm has broken. Central Elections Committee Chairman Justice Noam Sohlberg has ordered the Shin Bet to open an urgent investigation into suspicions that foreign money, allegedly including Qatari funds, was used to boost Arab turnout in Tuesday’s election. In his letter, Sohlberg warned of a potentially serious breach of election integrity, while stressing that he could not attest to the nature of the suspicions.
Likud figures were angered that the suspicions surfaced only after the vote, and demanded a full investigation. Qatar has officially denied any involvement in Israel’s elections.
Whatever the investigation finds, the episode underscores a reality Israel can no longer avoid. A country that serves as mediator, financier and adversary all at once cannot remain in that ambiguous position indefinitely. As the vote count draws to a close, Israel faces a reckoning over where its relationship with Qatar is heading, before it ends in a far more serious rupture.
