Prime Minister Netanyahu, or rather, the Israeli Air Force, dropped a bomb on the Hamas situation earlier today. Ground operations in Gaza are on a tactical level, but attacking Hamas leaders in Qatar was a strategic move. One of Israel’s objectives has been to remove Hamas from the political playing field. Killing a large number of senior Hamas ‘political’ wing people may help that happen. How? Consider this. Everyone says that a negotiated settlement is needed. Hamas has used this to endlessly drag out negotiations. Don’t forget that they want Israel to disappear. Their conditions for hostage releases and a cease fire are always framed in a way that makes it look like an Israeli surrender. Of course, Israeli terms also make it look like a Hamas surrender (which is what it needs to be). Is Israel saying that there is no point to continuing the farce of constant negotiations for a hostage release? Don’t forget that International Law calls for Hamas to release all civilians kidnap victims IMMEDIATELY. Various pundits make excuses for this not occurring by saying Hamas doesn’t want to give up its main point of negotiating leverage, If there are no negotiations that argument is useless.
Let’s look at some details of the attack. This kind of operation needs meticulous planning and superb intelligence. Preparations must be made in advance. When the window of opportunity opens, you must be ready to act. In this case, the Hamas leaders were meeting at a villa owned by one of them. There were no Qataris present. Qatari pride might be injured a bit because the attack took place in their country. But who let the Hamas leaders shelter there in the first place? Does this damage Qatar’s position as a negotiations intermediary? If there are no more negotiations, why is that important?
Did the US know about the attack in advance? That’s another irrelevant question. There is close cooperation between the IDF and American armed forces. The USAF obviously tracked the incoming IDF aircraft. But they were not evaluated as a threat (unlike the Iranian missiles that were launched at Qatar a few months ago.
Other Arab countries have tried (unsuccessfully) to influence Hamas to accept any of several deals over the past year. If the “day after” scenario doesn’t include Hamas, why should they care? Attacking Hamas leaders in Qatar has an added benefit in that it avoids providing fuel for the Hamas propaganda machine that is concentrating on (fake) claims of starvation and genocide.
Welcome to a new world where Israel can emulate Hamas and ignore some of the niceties of formal international law that Hamas claims don’t apply to them because, among other reasons, they are not a recognized country.
Wetherhorn 