Emile Hokayem
“Has Israel become the new Iran?” is not the debate the enthusiastic architects of the Abraham Accords envisioned playing out across the Gulf region following Tuesday’s Israeli attack in Qatar. However exaggerated and fleeting this sentiment may seem, it shows the lasting impact of the Gaza catastrophe.
US officials once proudly took credit for preventing the regionalisation of Israel’s war against Hamas and Iran. Yet, for the second time in three months, a Gulf state has faced the material consequences of the wholly mismanaged two-year war that is now radiating across the Middle East. In June, Iran fired a volley of missiles at a US base in Qatar. On Tuesday, Israel fired missiles into the headquarters of Hamas in an upscale residential district of Doha, hoping to kill its political leadership while they reportedly met to discuss the latest US ceasefire proposal.
Despite the apparent failure of the operation (no senior Hamas leader seems to have died) and unanimous condemnation of the strike, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has remained unapologetic. The attack, like the continuing Israeli campaign in Gaza City, is the latest evidence that Netanyahu has discarded diplomacy in favour of force and abandoned Israeli hostages in favour of the illusory goal of completely destroying Hamas. On top of the six people killed in Doha, Tuesday’s missile attack’s probable casualties will be any future negotiations, Qatar’s willingness to serve as a mediator, the remaining Israeli hostages and many more Palestinian civilians.
Netanyahu may pay a domestic price for this failed gambit, but his spin-doctors insist that the mere shock will erode Hamas’s morale and can force it to cave. This is a profound misunderstanding of extremist organisations which, even when faced with defeat, will find narratives to justify perpetual resistance. Hamas ceased to be a capable military organisation long ago. It may lob a rocket at Israel but it has lost cohesion, capabilities, leadership, supply lines and allies. What it still has — hostages, a grip on parts of Gaza and much of its population — it owes to Netanyahu’s machinations, territorial maximalism and his refusal to discuss a viable framework for Gaza’s future.
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