Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s decision to insult Qatari efforts to negotiate a ceasefire and hostage deal with Hamas was “puzzling,” former Mossad director Yossi Cohen told Walla on Thursday.
Cohen, who was previously groomed as a potential successor to Netanyahu in the Likud, criticized the prime minister and warned that Doha might choose to leave the negotiating table if Netanyahu’s attacks persist.
“It is puzzling to me,” the former Mossad chief admitted. “When I was present in discussions in the first days [of the war], I recommended maintaining our relationship with Qatar to the fullest extent possible.
“My real worry is that, if we don’t do that, we will reach a crisis too large to overcome,” Cohen continued. “Qatar would escape from the negotiating table, and we would be left without effective mediating,” he warned.
Former Mossad chief calls for total disengagement from Gaza
Cohen, speaking on the day-after plans for Gaza, proposed what he called a “total” disengagement.
“I would like to argue for a total disengagement from Gaza,” Cohen further told Walla. “We may have already disengaged, but not truly,” he said.
“There is not a soldier, officer, woman, or child in the Gaza Strip..we gave them the entire 365 squared kilometers. The responsibility for the Gazan population’s well-being rests in our hands. That must change,” Cohen added.
Earlier on Thursday, the families’ campaign to free the hostages accused Netanyahu and his associates of intentionally stoking tensions with Qatar by leaking a tape in which he insulted Doha’s efforts to negotiate a deal.
“All conversations that take place in meetings with the Prime Minister are recorded by his office and his associates present at the meeting,” the campaign’s spokesperson, Haim Rubinstein, said.
“The decision whether to leak information concerning the deal and its intermediaries is the Prime Minister’s office,” Rubinstein stated.
Tovah Lazaroff contributed to this report.
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