Israel’s strikes targeting members of Hamas leadership in suburban Doha, Qatar, in broad daylight on Tuesday could be construed not just as a major escalation, but even an act of war.
At least six people were killed, including a member of the Qatari diplomatic security service. The intended targets of Hamas’s senior leadership, including its chief Khalil el-Hayya, survived the attack. His son, did not.
The White House said it was given very short notice of the attack by the Israelis, after which it proceeded to tell the Qataris. But that message came far too late, Qatar’s foreign ministry said.
US President Donald Trump later called Qatar’s emir, Tamim bin Hamad al-Thani, to say he “feels very badly” and that this would not happen again, adding that such an attack “does not advance Israel or America’s interests”.
Qatar is a key mediator between Israel and Hamas, and now more than ever, that role may be in flux.
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Middle East Eye posed six critical questions to five regional experts on these developments to outline policy, geopolitical strategy, and realistic outcomes.
Their responses have been edited for length and clarity.
Qatar is arguably one of the safest countries in the world. Can the region feel safe if Israel, as US envoy Tom Barrack recently said, “can go anywhere it wants?”
Jasmine el-Gamal, foreign policy analyst and former Pentagon Middle East adviser: No one and no place in the region is safe under this Netanyahu government. That’s basically the message here. This is not the first time Netanyahu has ordered a strike on a sovereign country. Every single time he’s done it, the US, Europe, and other countries have either ignored it, encouraged it, or supported it.
Shalom Lipner, former Israeli government adviser, now at The Atlantic Council: Understandably, people are concerned whenever there’s a peak in violence [and] how that violence could possibly escalate. From Israel’s calculus – especially after the attack [on Monday] in Jerusalem, where six people were killed – Israel had been telegraphing that Hamas leadership was not immune to payback. Despite the manifestation of how this actually happened, there’s hope that it could lead somewhere more constructive.
Glenn Carle, national security expert with 25 years in the CIA’s clandestine services: Israel is not indiscriminately going after everybody in the Middle East, but it certainly is a qualitatively different kind of act. I think it will turn publics against Israel even more everywhere, and it will make governments much more wary of aligning themselves in any way with Israel.
Qatar has denied prior knowledge of the attack, but is there any possibility that it allowed for it to happen?
Dania Thafer, executive director, Gulf International Forum: I don’t think that’s plausible from the GCC (Gulf Cooperation Council) perspective. The number one priority for them and for their infrastructure, their location, for their economic vision is security, and they would not compromise that for anything.
Josh Paul, former US State Department official, now co-founder of A New Policy: I think the answer to that question will be seen in what the response is and how strong the response is, not only from Qatar, but from across the Arab world.
Gamal: I know that there are theories out there that Qatar wanted to expel Hamas but was afraid of being criticised for doing so by supporters of the pro-Palestinian crowd, or other governments. And so this would have been an easy way for them to say, “Oh, now we have to do this.” But there’s no actual reason to believe that Qatar would have allowed [the attack].
How much weight does international law still have, given the repeated violations of sovereignty?
Paul: It’s as if during the 1980s Britain had bombed Washington, DC, to kill [then-Sinn Féin president] Gerry Adams. It just makes a mockery of the whole system, and I think it should leave Middle Eastern countries not only feeling unsafe, but also questioning what the value is and the purposes of any further normalisation with a country that is willing to act like that.
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Gamal: International law died in Gaza. When Israel was violating these sovereign countries, when it was assassinating people in Lebanon and in Iran, and when it was bombing Syria, and the world turns a blind eye… why wouldn’t Netanyahu think that he could get away with doing this to a US ally?
Lipner: Hamas leaders are not immune to this kind of activity from Israel. I think that the strike was pretty surgical, and there was obviously an effort there not to make it expand beyond the parameters of the actual mission itself, in the hope that maybe… the parties would be able to re-engage.
Carle: The only real power that has been able to enforce international law – more or less irresistibly – has been the United States. And Trump has repudiated all of that. He’s acting unilaterally, rather than in support of an international normative system.
What implications does this attack have for the rest of the Gulf states?
Thafer: Saudi did have a very interesting response. They said they will go ahead and send resources to help Qatar in any way possible, and I think that is a message: the largest Gulf state and the most prominent Gulf state in many regards, Saudi Arabia, backing Qatar in such a way, is a signal that the GCC states are taking a more united front.
Carle: There may well have been a peace agreement between Israel and Saudi Arabia and others in the Gulf, and now I think it becomes more than very unlikely that the Muslim countries agree to normalising things with Israel. How can they do that when Israel has turned Palestine into a rubble heap?
Paul: One would think that at a minimum, the response will be an emergency session of the Arab League and an effort to suspend diplomatic ties with Israel. That would certainly be an appropriate starting place.
If Israel keeps trying to kill the negotiators, then was it ever serious about negotiations to begin with?
Gamal: If you look at the last two years, you will see that at every turn, Netanyahu has walked away from negotiations or sabotaged negotiations. At the end of the day, this is a person who’s beholden to extremists in his government who threatened to collapse it every single time he engages in ceasefire talks, whether or not they’re in good faith. If the government collapses, Netanyahu goes to jail, right? So he cannot let his government collapse.
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Lipner: Essentially, Hamas wants to remain in place and not hand over its weapons. Israel is saying that we’re not going to stop this thing until there’s another [Gaza] government in place. So it’s kind of been two steps forward, one step back.
Paul: This is an absolute betrayal of Israel’s own hostages in Gaza, for whom these negotiations seem to be the only plausible pathway to freedom. So this is, once again, the entire Israeli cabinet putting its own political interests above those of not only Palestinian humanity, but its own citizens.
Qatar is host to Centcom, the largest US military base in the region, and has kept the Hamas office open for Washington’s communications. How much of an erosion of trust is there now between these two countries?
Thafer: We still have not reached that breaking point where there is a better alternative than the US security-wise. So it’s kind of a conundrum for Qatar. The whole idea of being a mediator is one of being a peacebuilder and being able to make deals across different conflicts, but it’s also a way of taking yourself out of the crossfire. So there might be some questions about whether they should continue playing this mediator role.
Carle: Our air base is on their territory, and it’s always been controversial for the Qatari population. So that will strain relations more between the Qataris and the Americans. We’re both in a situation where we need each other. They need us there because of Iran, and we need someplace to be if we want to be in the Middle East.
Gamal: The UAE and Saudi Arabia are going to be looking at this very closely, and wondering, “What is going on? We are bending over backwards. We’re trying to make sure that we’re allied with the US on this issue, on that issue, the other issue”. The underlying assumption is that it will keep them safe. If that assumption is found to no longer be true, then what is the utility of allying with the US? Why wouldn’t you go to China? Why wouldn’t you get close to Iran and make a deal with the devil?
