The U.S. relationship with Qatar was a function of Washington’s post-9/11 delirium. Yesterday’s strike was about finally undoing it.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office says that Tuesday’s attack on Hamas leadership in Qatar “was a wholly independent Israeli operation.” That’s only partly true, though—because there’s no way Israeli Air Force jets fired missiles at Qatar, home of the largest U.S. air base in the Middle East, without a green light from the White House.
President Donald Trump says he feels “very badly” about the location of the attack. But if he didn’t want to give the impression that Israel was an instrument of his will, he wouldn’t have stated in the same breath that “eliminating Hamas, who have profited off the misery of those living in Gaza, is a worthy goal.” And that’s on top of him having warned Hamas last week to free all 48 hostages, Israeli and American, immediately or else.
As it turns out, what Trump issued wasn’t an ultimatum, but a death sentence. All Hamas has are the bodies of Israeli hostages, living and dead. Without them, the Palestinian terror group has nothing to bargain with and nothing to hide behind. Except, Hamas seems to have thought, Qatar.
That Hamas leaders thought they were safe in Doha is an issue Arab foreign ministries are likely to discuss for years to come. But Hamas must have known the U.S. president wasn’t in the habit of bluffing. Sure, he’d issue lots of warnings and promises—maybe out of a sense of fairness or because that’s how he negotiates. But eventually the hammer would fall. He encouraged the Iranians to make a deal, and when they tried to string him along, he joined Israel to strike the clerical regime’s prized nuclear facilities.
Maybe Hamas figured it was worth the risk, since what could Trump do? Not only did Hamas not have nuclear facilities, but also little was left in Gaza to hit. He couldn’t get to them, since they weren’t in Gaza but were hiding out in Doha. And the Americans wouldn’t dream of striking a Gulf Arab partner with whom he recently signed an agreement to generate an economic exchange worth more than a trillion dollars. Doha had even gifted Trump a plane to use while waiting for Boeing to complete a brand-new Air Force One.
It’s common wisdom, from Paris to Riyadh, that the ruling al-Thani family’s global investments wrapped the gas-rich emirate in a soft, warm blanket of impunity. Thus, Hamas’ mistake was the same one made throughout history, a tragic chronicle of losers who misjudged the strength of their allies and the resolve of their adversaries. Now the Qataris stand humiliated before the world they believed they had bought.
Reports have not yet clarified who was killed by Israel’s strike, though by press time, the several top leaders reportedly at the Doha meeting—including Khalil al-Hayya, Zaher Jabarin, Muhammad Darwish, Taher al-Nunu, Mousa Abu Marzouk, and Hussam Badran—have yet to stick their heads above ground to show they survived. In any case, the larger point is that the strikes showed there’s nowhere to hide for the architects of the Oct. 7 attacks.
But killing Hamas’ top men doesn’t change the reluctance of the IDF’s top brass to go back into Gaza in force. Nor will it dampen France and Saudi Arabia’s desire to push for recognition of a Palestinian state at the U.N. General Assembly later this month. With Israel piling up wins against its foes, the Arabs and their European bankers and real-estate agents have become increasingly determined to put the Israeli military genie back in the bottle. Stopping Iran’s nuclear program was one thing, but laying waste to Hamas, Hezbollah, and the Houthis to augment Israeli prestige and power is untenable to Jerusalem’s regional rivals and the Western capitals that stand with them.
The device they have chosen to slow Israel’s momentum is a Palestinian state, a practical absurdity that has been elevated to the planet’s most urgent and righteous moral cause. And because the Palestinians are incapable of peaceably governing a state that they do not even want, Israel must pay the price in international opprobrium, canceled soccer and basketball games, expulsion from supposedly objective scientific and scholarly associations, and the like for years to come.
Israel will weather the consequences. But the problem of Gaza itself will be more difficult to solve. Even if Hamas’ few remaining higher-echelon leaders flee to Turkey, and Israel raises its flag over the remains of Gaza City, someone will have to take responsibility for security inside the ruined territory. Israel has little apparent appetite for returning there as an occupying power that rules over 2 million miserable people whom it will be accused of deliberately starving to death every time the water system breaks down or a local bakery runs out of pita.
For the United States, the Israeli strike on Doha signals a long-overdue correction of U.S. Middle East policy, which has been a cause of disaster for both America and the region for the past two decades.
Thursday marks the 24th anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks. With the Twin Towers still smoking, President George W. Bush vowed revenge against those who slaughtered Americans on U.S. soil. But the man who claimed authorship of the attacks lived on for another 10 years, and when justice finally caught up with Osama bin Laden, he was found in a compound less than a mile from a top Pakistani military academy. That he’d been sheltered by a longtime U.S. ally was evidence of what had happened during the intervening decade: In trying to arrange political outcomes in the Middle East without prioritizing U.S. interests, while pursuing goals disconnected from reality, Washington lost the ability to distinguish between friend and foe.
Lee Smith, Tablet
THE ARTFUL DILETTANTE 