Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – The government of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu bombed the building being used by civilian Hamas negotiators in Doha, Qatar, on Tuesday, in the midst of ongoing indirect negotiations with them. Five low-level Hamas members were killed, along with a Qatari security guard, but the top negotiators survived. Earlier this summer Israel and the U.S. also bombed Iran while ostensibly negotiating with Tehran. One takeaway, I suppose, is that negotiating with either one is bad for your health.
The Trump administration is implicated in the attack, since it had foreknowledge. It is not clear that Israeli jets could have flown over Jordan and Saudi Arabia to strike near a major U.S. military base, al-Udeid, which has 12,000 or so active duty personnel, without at least tacit US approval. The US controls the air space near al-Udeid and could have told the Israelis “no.”
It should be underlined that the Obama administration asked Qatar to host Hamas negotiators for the purpose of talking to them indirectly, and Qatar has been repeatedly praised by the US State Department and even by the Israeli Foreign Ministry for undertaking this role. When, in 2018, Qatar considered expelling Hamas officials and ending its role as intermediary, Netanyahu sent the Mossad chief to Doha to beg the Qataris to continue to play that role.
As an analyst, let me explore the possible reasons for which the Netanyahu government took this step at this time.
1. In first place, the strike aimed at taking negotiations with Hamas off the table. Netanyahu and his extremists on the cabinet do not want negotiations. They want to ethnically cleanse Gaza and kill all members of the Hamas paramilitary, the al-Qassam Brigades. They seem also not to mind killing civilian members of the Hamas political party, or even just random non-political residents of Gaza. These goals are not a response to the October 7, 2023 Hamas attack on Israel, but derive from a longstanding desire on the part of the Israeli right wing to erase the Palestinians from Palestine and forever to forestall the establishment of a Palestinian state.
Despite the extremist cabinet’s antipathy to negotiations, perhaps a majority of Israelis want such talks, to bring the remaining hostages home and to end a war that is killing or wounding their young men, harming their finances through conscription, and hurting the economy (outside the stock market, which has soared, benefiting Netanyahu’s billionaire backers).
Netanyahu has also occasionally come under pressure from the Trump administration to negotiate an end to the fighting. Trump strongly supported the cease-fire initially arranged by the Biden team last January, and exerted strong pressure on Netanyahu to agree to it. After two months, Netanyahu unilaterally breached the ceasefire and launched an even more vicious ethnic cleansing campaign. Trump occasionally wishes he wouldn’t do that.
Destroying the negotiators’ very offices makes the issue of negotiations moot.
2. A secondary motive in striking the Hamas civilian negotiators may have been to blunt the protest movement in Israel, which has repeatedly brought tens of thousands of Israelis into the streets of major cities demanding a ceasefire for the sake of Israeli hostages. If there are no negotiations for a ceasefire or hostage release, Netanyahu may hope, his opponents will be deprived of that issue. At the very least, he can make them appear to denounce a strike on Hamas offices, which turns them into traitors in the eyes of most Israelis. Even Netanyahu’s political opposition lauded the Doha air strikes. So, domestic Israeli politics. Wag the dog is a tried and true tactic.
3. Israel may have wanted to drive a wedge between the United States and Qatar. In May, the US and Qatar signed a multi-billion-dollar pact that would see Qatar acquire anti-drone technology from Raytheon and THAAD anti-missile batteries from Lockheed Martin. If these deliveries are made and Qatari personnel are trained on them, the new anti-missile and anti-drone capabilities might make it increasingly difficult for Israel to bomb Qatar at will. If Netanyahu can make the Qataris angry enough to call off their $42 billion defense deal with the Trump administration, that breach would ensure Israel’s continued ability to bomb the country.
“Doha, Qatar.” 2018. © Juan Cole.
4. Israel is making a bid to use its air superiority to become a regional hegemon. Part of what this dominance implies is the Israeli ability to strike anywhere in the Middle East at will, in order to shape regional politics. Tel Aviv is routinely bombing Syria, even though the two countries are not at war and even though the Trump administration has recognized the new fundamentalist revolutionary government in Damascus and removed sanctions. Israel routinely bombs Lebanon despite a supposed ceasefire negotiated last fall. Israel routinely bombs civilian objects in Yemen in response to Houthi missile attacks on Israel, and recently whacked the Houthi prime minister. Israel has also bombed Iran and considered assassinating its entire political class. A strike on Doha underlines Israel’s new status as primary shaper of political reality in the Middle East.
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