Israel’s attempted killing of Hamas’s senior global leadership on Tuesday was the clearest indication in months that the war in Gaza is unlikely to end in a hostage deal between Israel and Hamas.
The airstrike by the Israeli Air Force on a residential building in Doha, the capital of Qatar, a US ally, reportedly took place as Hamas leaders, some of whom had traveled from out of the country, were meeting to discuss the Trump administration’s latest ceasefire proposal. According to Hamas, five people were killed in the attack, but the Hamas leaders, including Khalil al-Hayya, the group’s exiled Gaza leader, and Khaled Mashaal, head of Hamas abroad, had survived. Qatar’s interior ministry says a member of their internal security forces was killed.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu reportedly gave the green light for the strike following an attack by a Palestinian gunman that killed six people at a Jerusalem bus stop on Monday. White House officials say the US was informed of the strike after the missiles had been launched, though Netanyahu described it as a “wholly independent Israeli operation.” The White House has distanced itself from the strikes; press secretary Karoline Leavitt told reporters that while eliminating Hamas is a worthy goal, “Unilaterally bombing inside Qatar, a sovereign nation and close ally of the United States … does not advance Israel or America’s goals.” Leavitt also said that President Donald Trump’s envoy, Steve Witkoff, had informed the Qatari government of the impending attack and that Trump had assured the country’s leaders that “such a thing will not happen again on their soil.”
The attack comes at a pivotal moment in the now nearly two-year-old war in Gaza, as the Trump administration is making a renewed push for a ceasefire deal and Israel is preparing for a new ground offensive.
Earlier on Tuesday, Israel ordered the total evacuation of Gaza City in anticipation of the operation, which has been codenamed “Gideon’s Chariots II” as a follow-up to the last major ground offensive into the enclave over the summer. Israel has also been blowing up residential high-rise buildings in the city that it says are used as Hamas military positions. Even amid these preparations, some have questioned whether Israel’s exhausted military is really about to go through with another major ground operation.
“There’s been this debate about whether the announcement of Gideon’s Chariots II and the pending ground offensive in Gaza City was meant to be a way of putting more pressure on Hamas to agree to a deal,” Michael Koplow, chief policy officer at the US-based Israel Policy Forum, told Vox following the Doha strike. “I think we now have our answer.”
That answer being that Israel’s government remains committed, as Netanyahu stated at the outset of the war nearly three years ago, to defeating Hamas militarily rather than agreeing to a ceasefire as it has in the past. (That’s to say nothing of possible plans for relocating Gaza’s civilian population.) The strike has already received praise from politicians across the political spectrum in Israel, though the support has not been universal.
Einav Zangauker, the mother of one of the surviving Israeli hostages held by Hamas, said in a X post that, “It could be that at this very moment, the Prime Minister has actually assassinated my Matan, sealed his fate.”
What’s left of diplomacy in the Middle East?
The fact that Hamas leaders were able to live and operate more or less openly in Qatar, which, like Israel, is considered one of the United States’ “major non-NATO allies,” was always something of an anomaly.
Though the Qataris have come under heavy US and Israeli criticism for hosting Hamas, both countries have also found it useful for the group to have a fixed address and a ready interlocutor — the Qatari government — when they did need to negotiate it. In fact, prior to the October 7 attacks, Israel supported Qatar’s decision to send millions of dollars every year to the Hamas-led government in Gaza. Part of the message of the strikes could be that Israel is no longer interested in having an interlocutor — or in talking.
Qatar’s foreign policy has long been a delicate balancing act: It hosts Hamas as well as the largest US military facility in the Middle East, Al Udeid Air Base. It’s a member of the Gulf Cooperation Council, along with countries like the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia, but also maintains friendly relations with its archrival, Iran. The connection with Iran, among other factors, made it a target of Trump during his first administration, but Qatar has spent billions of dollars on lobbying to get back in Washington’s good graces, including employing some current members of Trump’s administration. That effort appeared to have paid off when Trump visited the emirate in May, inked a massive trade and defense deal, and accepted a Boeing 747 as a gift, ostensibly as a temporary replacement for Air Force One.
Qatar may fancy itself a sort of Switzerland of the Middle East — it has also played host to negotiations over the wars in Afghanistan and Ukraine — but in doing so, it has seemingly made itself a target. Israel’s strike comes less than three months after Iran launched missiles at US forces in Qatar in retaliation for the American bombing of its nuclear facilities. In this case, it was the negotiators themselves who were targeted.
The Qataris “placed too much trust in the presence of the al-Udeid base to make sure things like this won’t happen,” Hussein Ibish, a senior scholar at the Arab Gulf States Institute in Washington, told Vox.
This is also the second time this year, after Iran in June, that leaders involved in ongoing, public negotiations with the United States have come under attack by Israel. Last week, Trump described the US as being “in deep negotiations with Hamas.”
Trump also warned Hamas last week that, “If you immediately release the hostages, good things are going to happen, but if you don’t, it is going to be tough and nasty for you.” So it’s notable that the White House, at least so far, is distancing itself from Israel’s action rather than taking credit for making good on Trump’s threat, as it did when Israel struck Iran.
But given that the US hasn’t done much to restrain Israel in either case, many in the region are likely to question whether these were genuine negotiations at all, and whether it’s worth it to pick up the phone when Witkoff is on the line.
It’s also a reminder that the Israeli government believes Hamas can be wiped out through military force and that its other enemies in the region can be dealt with through periodic “mowing the grass” strikes in multiple countries.
If that proves not to be the case, it may soon find it has no one willing to negotiate and nowhere to hold the negotiations.
