Israel quietly pressed Qatar to expand financial support to Gaza just weeks before the Hamas-led October 7, 2023, massacre, according to a new report that adds a new layer to questions about the policies that preceded the deadliest attack in the country’s history.

Yediot Acharonot reported Friday that in September 2023, senior Israeli officials met in a Jerusalem hotel with Mohammed al-Emadi, Doha’s longtime envoy to Gaza, and asked him to increase Qatari-funded fuel purchases intended for the Hamas-run enclave. The request came roughly one month before Hamas terrorists stormed southern Israel, killing about 1,200 people and abducting 251 others.

At the center of the meeting was a familiar but controversial arrangement. Since 2021, Qatar had been buying fuel from Egypt and transferring it to Gaza, where Hamas sold it to local gas stations, providing the group with revenue to pay officials and commanders. Israel, while not funding Hamas directly, was a tacit partner in the mechanism, viewing it as a way to stabilize Gaza and avoid another round of fighting.

The report says Israel’s request mirrored an earlier demand made by Hamas itself. About a month before the Jerusalem meeting, al-Emadi traveled to Gaza and met with then-Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar, who urged Qatar to more than double monthly fuel purchases, from roughly $3 million to $7 million. Al-Emadi refused. Weeks later, Israeli officials would make the same ask.

According to the newspaper, the Israeli request was part of a developing understand­ing with Hamas aimed at halting a renewed wave of “March of Return” protests along the Gaza border. Israeli security officials viewed those demonstrations—echoes of the violent weekly riots of 2018–2019—as pressure tactics designed to extract economic concessions in exchange for quiet.

Behind the scenes, Gaza was under growing strain. Deepening poverty had driven rare, spontaneous protests by Gazans against Hamas during the summer of 2023—an outbreak of dissent that the terror group swiftly crushed. In retrospect, Israeli officials now believe Hamas was simultaneously working to suppress internal unrest and project restraint toward Israel, lulling decision-makers into a false sense of stability ahead of its planned onslaught.

Al-Emadi told Israeli officials at the Jerusalem meeting that he could not immediately commit Qatar to increasing fuel purchases, the report said. Still, Qatari funding continued.

Some time after that meeting—and before October 7—Mossad chief David Barnea traveled to Doha, where he urged Qatari officials to maintain financial assistance to Gaza, according to a December 2023 report by The New York Times. From 2018 until the day of the attack, Qatar transferred tens of millions of dollars in cash to Gaza each month.

The policy was publicly championed by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who argued the payments were necessary to avert a humanitarian collapse. Netanyahu has since denied that Qatari funds—sent with Israel’s approval—played any role in financing Hamas’s October 7 operation.

That denial has been challenged by reports that Netanyahu was warned at least twice before the attack that Hamas’s military chief, Muhammad Deif, was diverting funds with the government’s knowledge.

Since the massacre and the war that followed, Qatar’s long-standing role in propping up Hamas has come under intense scrutiny inside Israel. The controversy has deepened amid an ongoing criminal investigation into alleged illicit ties between Doha and several of Netanyahu’s close aides, who are suspected of running a pro-Qatari public relations effort during the war.

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