Yes, certainly
This isn't a hidden point in Israeli media,
Times of Israel
According to various reports, Netanyahu made a similar point at a Likud faction meeting in early 2019, when he was quoted as saying that those who oppose a Palestinian state should support the transfer of funds to Gaza, because maintaining the separation between the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank and Hamas in Gaza would prevent the establishment of a Palestinian state.
Hareetz quoting Gershon Hacohen, a major general that oversaw the 2005 withdrawal from Gaza,
We need to tell the truth! Netanyahu’s strategy is to prevent the option of two states. So he is turning Hamas into his closest partner. Hamas is an enemy covertly. It’s now also an ally.
You may think he said this from a place of disagreement, or that he was trying to speak truth to power. But no; he agrees fully (from the Times of Israel's interview).
This is also why, he added, "I prefer Hamas to Abu Mazen." Because Hamas "helps me prevent a two-state solution" and is, covertly "an ally, because neither it nor I want a final solution and neither in my terms nor in its is there something that is everlasting."
Jpost
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu defended Israel’s regular allowing of Qatari funds to be transferred into Gaza, saying it is part of a broader strategy to keep Hamas and the Palestinian Authority separate, a source in Monday’s Likud faction meeting said.
Ynetnews, from Nadav Eyal
For a long time, Israel chose not to weaken Hamas in order to undermine the Palestinian Authority. The belief, shared by Benjamin Netanyahu, Bezalel Smotrich, and others, was that the extremist nature of Hamas and the division between the PA and the Gaza Strip served Israel's interests. By maintaining this division, the possibility of a unified Palestinian partner capable of negotiating political concessions with Israel was effectively rejected.
Hamas's origin; blowback at best
And much of the political persuasion which is "anything to stop a unified Palestinian movement" predates both Likud and Netanyahu, take it from US based (and heavily pro-Israel) Wall-Street Journal
"Hamas, to my great regret, is Israel's creation," says Mr. Cohen, a Tunisian-born Jew who worked in Gaza for more than two decades. Responsible for religious affairs in the region until 1994, Mr. Cohen watched the Islamist movement take shape, muscle aside secular Palestinian rivals and then morph into what is today Hamas, a militant group that is sworn to Israel's destruction. Instead of trying to curb Gaza's Islamists from the outset, says Mr. Cohen, Israel for years tolerated and, in some cases, encouraged them as a counterweight to the secular nationalists of the Palestine Liberation Organization and its dominant faction, Yasser Arafat's Fatah. Israel cooperated with a crippled, half-blind cleric named Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, even as he was laying the foundations for what would become Hamas. Sheikh Yassin continues to inspire militants today; during the recent war in Gaza, Hamas fighters confronted Israeli troops with "Yassins," primitive rocket-propelled grenades named in honor of the cleric.
The mechanism here was pretty simple. Sheikh Yassin ran a chairty,
In the 1970s, the Islamists in Palestine were mostly peaceful, and Ahmed Yassin spent this period of his life doing charity work and building Islamic community centres. Israel even gave him funding for his charitable work.
Note at that time, in the 1970s, Yassin was a member of the Muslim Brotherhood. He wasn't known to be a militant (at least from declassified and public information) until 1984 when he was busted stockpiling weapons (so there seems to still be some degree of plausible deniability). And, Yassin wouldn't start Hamas until 1987. In order to set back the PLO and Arafat, Israel got behind Islamists that had an audience and could challenge state power by funding their charities in an attempt to delegitimize the Palestinian proto-state.
In the words of Avi Issacharoff (who, by the way, is extremely genocidal) and I'd suggest reading the full article,
Listen, what we’ve created with our own hands is crazy. We’ve created a monster – the strongest force in the region – and they hit us very hard – like nothing before.
Nuance, and "material support"
Is allowing Qatari funds to be distributed to Hamas, "support of Hamas"? Certainly, at least that's the standard that already exists. But it doesn't take proof by action when Netanyahu and his government say the things above. In the United States the Patriot Act makes "providing material support to terrorists" a crime. It also applies to non-citizens, and those operating outside of the USA. How does this apply here? We have Americans in prison for allowing charity funds to go to schools administered by Hamas. From renowned Israeli Jew Miko Peled, as published by Truthout
Although all funds raised by the charity had gone to humanitarian aid and the government had found no illegal financial transactions by HLF, prosecutors relied on Executive Order 12947 issued by President Clinton on January 23, 1995, which prohibits financial transactions with any “Specially Designated” organizations. By the time HLF was shut down, the Palestinian Islamic Resistance movement, known as Hamas, was one of these organizations. The prosecution’s theory was that, by supporting needy Palestinians, HLF had “freed up” Hamas’ own assets to fund terrorist attacks, and that if Palestinians knew that HLF would provide support for their families if assistance became necessary, they would be more likely to become suicide bombers.
This is not an argument I find convincing, but it is merely holding Israel up to the standard that it expects from others.
Administration officials said that during an Oval Office meeting on Sunday, Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon asked Bush to move against the Holy Land Foundation, and the president speedily obliged. "We -- bam -- did it," a senior official said.
At the point that humanitarian aid to Gaza is "material support for terrorism" Qatari funds are (at best) the same thing, and certainly Likud knew it was a practical party to the transaction by refusing to act against funds it would normally act against despite having obvious and explicit knowledge.
