It’s all part of a stratagem, bleak and brutal. With Palestinian recognition being promised by France, the UK, Canada and Australia at the 80th session of the United Nations General Assembly, Israeli aggression is becoming more brazen and panicked. Time must be bought on one vital front: creating a Greater Israel, involving the annexation of Gaza and extinguishing, as far as possible, the power of the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank. What follows from this is the termination of Palestinian statehood altogether, including its political representatives.
Israel’s efforts have, for that purpose, focused on killing Hamas militants at enormous cost to Palestinian civilians while also attempting to eradicate the diplomatic presence of the organisation. The attack on a building in Doha, Qatar on September 9 was a case in point. The intention of the attack by the IDF, involving 15 Israeli fighter jets and an unspecified number of drones, was killing senior Hamas officials involved in discussing a ceasefire proposal advanced by US President Donald Trump. Were it to be accepted, that proposal would see the release of all Israeli hostages (dead and alive) in exchange for Palestinian prisoners, followed by a ceasefire of 60 days duration and ongoing negotiations towards an agreement concluding the war. Qatar had been putting pressure on Hamas to accept the proposal.
While Hamas personnel were killed, such senior negotiators as Khalil al-Hayya (who lost his son), Zaher Jabarin, and Khaled Mashal, were spared. Seven perished in the strike, with Qatar losing two security officers. Yet again, Israel’s military action demonstrated a reading of international law that tilts towards anarchical self-assurance, indifferent to any sovereignty that is not its own. As Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu reasoned, Qatar was hosting terrorists. “I say to Qatar and all nations who harbour terrorists, you either expel them or you bring them to justice. Because you don’t, we will.”
Israeli officials, in keeping with an established, somewhat jaundiced view of international relations, advanced a novel, unhinged reading of the attack on Qatari soil. Israeli Ambassador to the US, Yechiel Leiter, offered his dash of drivel by suggesting that this would “actually advance the efforts for a ceasefire and peace.” And as for the Hamas leaders, “if we didn’t get them this time, we’ll get them the next time.”
A condemnation of Netanyahu’s comments followed from Qatar’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, which described them as a “shameful attempt … to justify the cowardly attack that targeted Qatari territory, as well as the explicit threats of future violations of state sovereignty.”
Qatar’s Prime Minister Mohammed bin Abdulrahman bin Jassim Al Thani, undoubtedly stung that his country’s modernised military had failed to protect the capital, drew the obvious conclusion. The strike had been motivated by Israel’s desire to eliminate “any chance of peace” in Gaza, and effectively sealed the fate of the Israeli hostages still being held in the Strip. “Everything in the meeting is very well known to the Israelis and the Americans. It’s not something that we are hiding.”
He also demanded some “collective response” to the attack. “There is a response that will happen from the region. This response is currently under consultation and discussion with other partners in the region,” he explained to CNN. What that will look like is by no means clear, given the temperamental nature of relations between the various Gulf states. Al Jazeera’s Charles Stratford reports that a legal committee is being pooled to consider “all legal avenues to have Netanyahu tried for breaking international law.”
Even Israel’s least conditional sponsor felt that things had gone too far. “I’m not thrilled by it,” stated Trump as he arrived at a restaurant in Washington. “It’s not a good situation but I will say this: We want the hostages back, but we’re not thrilled about the way it went down today.” He went further, saying he was “very unhappy about it, very unhappy about every aspect.” The President had every reason to harbour such sentiments, given the value of US-Qatar relations and the hosting of US forces at Al-Udeid, the largest US airbase in the Middle East. If Doha can be attacked with impunity, an American military presence becomes less impressive. This was a point Iran’s state-run Press TV found too delicious to avoid. “Did you know,” went the network’s post on X, “that Qatar hosts one of the US’s biggest military bases in the Persian Gulf, with many air defense systems present, yet none of the American THAAD systems fired a single shot to defend Qatar against the Israel invasion?”
The Israeli PM’s list of legal woes is further reason time is being bought. Israel’s strikes across the Middle East this year have been efforts to keep war in the spotlight, peace suspended, and Netanyahu out of jail. The war in Gaza, the attacks on the Houthis in Yemen, the strikes on Iran’s nuclear facilities or the targeting of Syria, have all become matters of personal self-interest and prolongation. Were there a serious risk of pacific calm breaking out, if only momentarily, Netanyahu would have to face something he fails to take seriously: the force of the law.
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