Almost exactly a year ago I interviewed the Hamas leader and chief negotiator Khalil al-Hayya in Doha. I met him in a house not far from the building that Israel attacked on Tuesday afternoon.
From the beginning of the war in Gaza, al-Hayya had been the chief Hamas negotiator, sending and receiving messages to the Israelis and Americans via Qatari and Egyptian intermediaries.
At moments where ceasefires were thought likely, al-Hayya, along with the men who were also targeted this afternoon, were only a short distance from the Israeli and American delegations. When they were attacked, al-Hayya and the other top Hamas leaders were discussing the latest American diplomatic proposals to end the war in Gaza and free the remaining Israeli hostages.
Israel's swift declaration of what it had done immediately fuelled speculation on social media that the latest American proposals were simply a ruse to get the Hamas leadership in one place where they could be targeted.
On 3rd October last year, as Khalil al-Hayya walked into the venue for our meeting in a modest, low-rise villa, I was surprised that he had so little security. We had to give up our phones, and a couple of bodyguards came with him into the house.
Outside plain clothes Qatari police sat smoking in an SUV. That was it. A hundred bodyguards could not have stopped an air strike, but al-Hayya and his people were relaxed and confident.
The point was that Qatar was supposed to be safe, and they felt secure enough to move around relatively openly.
A few months earlier, on 31 July 2024, Israel had assassinated Ismail Haniyeh, the Hamas political leader in Tehran, where he was attending the inauguration of President Masoud Pezeshkian.
With the war in Gaza raging, I had wondered whether it might be dangerous to sit in the same room as Khalil al-Hayya. But like him, I thought Qatar was off limits.
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