Israel Bombs Hamas Leaders in Quatar
BREAKING NEWS
AP (“Israel says it targets Hamas leadership in Qatar’s capital as blast heard in Doha“):
An Israeli official has told The Associated Press that it targeted Hamas’ leadership in Qatar’s capital, Doha.
The official spoke on condition of anonymity because he wasn’t authorized to speak beyond the public statement.
Qatar has condemned what it referred to as a “cowardly Israeli attack” on Hamas’ political headquarters in its capital, Doha. Foreign Ministry spokesman Majed Al Ansari called it a “flagrant violation of all international laws and norms.”
THIS IS A BREAKING NEWS UPDATE. AP’s earlier story follows below.
DOHA, Qatar (AP) — Israel’s military said Tuesday it carried out an airstrike targeting Hamas leadership, without saying where.
The announcement came as an explosion could be heard in Doha, Qatar’s capital.
The Qatari-funded news network Al Jazeera linked the blast to the Israeli announcement. The blast echoed in Doha, sending black smoke into the air. It wasn’t immediately clear if anyone was injured in the attack.
Hamas’ exiled leadership has long been based in Qatar, which has served as a mediator in talks between Hamas and Israel for several years, even before the latest war in the Gaza Strip.
I’m honestly surprised it has taken this long. Presumably, this followed longstanding demands to hand over the leaders.
Still, this is obviously a significant escalation. While I don’t expect a response in kind from Doha, this can’t possibly help Israel’s relationship with Saudi Arabia and other Arab countries.
They’re a country of cartoon evil. Every dumb war crime they commit makes them angrier, because only the psychos locate logic in the crime. They repeat the crime, thinking that this time, if you murder the child, journalist, doctor, or negotiator, the world will wake up and understand the truth about Hamas. When that doesn’t happen, they go ever crazier.
It’s like three minutes of watching Elmer Fudd wind himself up–but without the moral conclusions of Looney Tunes. It’s no wonder so many shit Americans love Zionism and what it’s up to.
@Modulo Myself:
To be fair, this is one of the saner things Israel has done recently. Here, at least, there is a case to be made that they are defending themselves.
It certainly beats the madness of the Iran strikes, let alone the Gaza genocide.
@drj:
This stretches the notion of ‘self-defense’ to the point of absurdity. Hamas is damaged and Gaza is in ruins. What’s the threat here? This is about Israel becoming worse than Hamas and a pariah state to anybody who isn’t insane.
I was surprised, but should not have been. Israel has been effective in lulling its enemies into a false sense of security and then killing them.
The Irony of Qatar being targeted by both Iran and Israel in a short period of time would be amusing if the implications weren’t so serious. Doha has tried to play both sides as a national strategy, and that is probably over.
Despite Israeli claims that it acted completely independently, there’s no chance the US didn’t greenlight this. So much for that 747 Qatar gave…
Kill the negotiator and later bomb where the negotiations were happening… one might almost think the Israelis weren’t serious about negotiating.
Good for Israel. It’s the smug, Gucci-slippered Hamas leadership in Qatari 5-star hotels who are sacrificing their own people. These are the men who decided massacring Israeli kids would be an excellent move. These are the men sacrificing their own people and murdering any who dare to object to the Hamas suicide pact. These are not innocent Gazan civilians, these men are monsters.
@Modulo Myself:
I meant “saner” relatively speaking.
What Israel did is, considering the context, very, very bad. From the link:
If negotiations weren’t dead before, they’re certainly dead now. And the US got very much implicated, too.
Much like Iran thought it was negotiating with the US right before the Israeli bombs fell.
Great work all around.
@Michael Reynolds:
Unlikely the current political leaders were in on 10/7, actually, Sinwar maintained good op-sec. it’s doubtful if even the political leader in Qatar at the time was informed, and the Israelis killed that guy quite some time ago.
This is about ending negotiations by eliminating negotiators. Time to “get rid of the people”, as Jared put it.
@dazedandconfused:
Yet nonetheless, the leadeship in Qatar accepted the operation, defended it in retrospect, and were complicit in the whole Hamas “rejectionist” strategy that left only nihilistic slaughter as a mode of operation.
Their continued insistence on treating the Israeli hostages, living and dead, as bargaining chips to secure Israeli compliance with Hamas conditions has been abhorrent.
And also pointless.
Unless they intend to retain hostages indefinitely, there is no security for them against Israel accepting terms, then reneging.
The attempt to somehow use them as a lever to sustain some residual Hamas power in Gaza, and perhaps for themselves as “legitimate representatives of the Palestinian people” is both sickening and stupid and above all pointless.
It’s done nothing but play into the hands of Netanyahu and the Israeli far-right, while ignoring the interests of the actual people of Gaza.
They would have done better to realise that Hamas in Gaza effectively doomed itself on 6 October 2023, and try to attain a “least worst” outcome for the people they claim to be so concerned about.
@Andy:
Both the Qataris and the UAE have, in recent years, been rather overly keen on trying to be “geopolitically clever”, in their diffrent ways.
The UAE account in these matters is also looking seriously overdrawn.
Arguably it’s only Trumpian insouciance, and Biden’s inclination to neglect, that have encouraged rather marginal states to play silly buggers.
iirc a Saudi remark on the subject : “You are antelopes in a world of tigers. Best to avoid the attentions of the tigers.”
Ha. So the past year-and-a-half of reducing Gaza to rubble served what purpose, if Hamas’s actual leadership was not there? All this time justifying the bombing of hospitals in Gaza, the abandonment of Israeli hostages rotting in Gaza, the starvation of families in Gaza, and the slaughter of toddlers, aid workers, and journalists in Gaza was for what then, if not to decapitate Hamas leadership not in Gaza?
Was this more of the Netanyahu regime’s signature incompetence — like the many years spent funding and boosting Hamas in some too-clever-by-half plan to undercut Palestinian moderates and sideline the Israeli peace movement? Not to mention the related 7 Oct security failure and delayed military response that left the kibbutzim under defenseless attack for hours.
Or was this just more of its cartoonish evil, like when Netanyahu and his ilk were busy inciting the murder of Yzithak Rabin — a statesman whose corpse most of modern Israel is not fit to lick?
A little of column A, a little of column B, probably.
@JohnSF: Bibi knew HAMAS were bad actors when he helped to put them in power and worked to keep them there. They were very much part of the Israeli right-wing project to annex the place somewhere down the road by insuring the Palestinians, at least the Gazans anyway, were represented by nutcases.
It worked pretty well for some time. Just prior to 10/7 the Arabs were about ready to forget about Palestine, normalizing relations with Israel and finally accepting it’s existence was becoming real. But Bibi never expected the leopard would go for faces the way it did. 10/7 was, IMO, prompted by despair, a tragic “last great act of defiance” and the opportunity provided by Bibi stripping the guards around the “world’s largest prison” to support the settlers.
If you’re gonna have a 2 million inmate prison, you better guard it.
@DK:
It depends on which leadership.
There were always two: the external, largely in Qatar, the internal, in Gaza (and also in the West Bank)
The Gaza leadership had control of the actual fighters, and thus the rule of Gaza.
While for securit reason not including the “externals” in operational control.
While the external leadership managemed most of the financial transfers, both overt and covert. (And grew rather rich on skimming that take)
And managed the diplomatic relations, various (apart perhaps from the Iranians, who appear to have had a separate link into Gaza).
It seems to have been generally hoped that the “externals” would accept that Hamas rule in Gaza was over and done.
But, for probably a variety of reasons, they appear to have been committed to salvaging Hamas as an ongoing ruler of Gaza, and trading the hostages to achieve that.
This attack indicate that the Israeli government will not accept any such deal.
Whic was always a delusion anyway: without permanent hostages, which Israel would not tolerate, any deal could not guarantee Israeli compliance.
The relity is. Hamas is no longer in a position to dictate terms, and the Israelis have just made plain, in the most brutal and overt possible way, what should have been obvious to the “external leadership” rom the morning after 6 October 2023.
That the “Gaza leadership” of Hamas had comprhensively f@cked them all.
Their one hope was a delusion that Iran and Hezbollah (oh, yes, and the Houthis) could somehow shield them.
Utter fools.
@dazedandconfused:
Netanyahu did not crate Hamas, nor did the IDF place Hamas in control of Gaza.
They could have intevened to support Fatah: and what would the reaction to that have been?
An Israeli occupation of Gaza, the likely collapse of Fatah support in the West Bank, and general bleating about “Israeli imperialism”.
As for “the worlds largest prison”, would you have expected the Israelis to permit free movement from Gaza into Israel?
Or the Israelis to compel the Egyptians to open up their boder with Gaza?
Or what, precisely?
That “worlds largest prison” trope is quite remarkably lacking in context.
(See also, Berlin)
Netanyahus idiocy in re the security forces near Gaza is another matter entirely, and one I suspect he will eventually end up answereing for.
Certainly, a lot of Isrealis, including the security forces, are unlikely to forgive him for that.
But there is another side to the coin: Hamas, Hezbollah, Iran, and the “axis of resistance.”
And as I said earlier: much of the “campist left” has hurriedly “memrory holed” their entire “Hamas are the legitimate representatives of the Palestinain people” narrative that they were so keen on from 200 to 2023.