Israel Ends Qatar’s Immunity

Israel’s strike on a gathering of the Hamas leadership in Doha, Qatar, appears to signal that Jerusalem is no longer willing to accommodate and indulge the role that the tiny and fabulously wealthy Gulf emirate has allotted to itself in recent years in the region. That is progress.

The Qatari role in the Israel-Hamas conflict over the last decade has been complex, subtle, sometimes only semi-visible, and entirely negative in its effect. It’s not yet clear if the Israeli raid succeeded in removing the senior Hamas leadership, in whole or in part. But whatever the outcome, the operation is welcome in that it suggests that Doha is from now on set to pay the price of its associations. That is, if a country wishes to domicile and facilitate the lives and activities of a murderous Islamist terror group, then it will do so. But it should not expect then to remain immune from the attentions of the victims and intended targets of the said terror group.

Qatar’s activities in the Middle East have handily been described as combining the functions of the arsonist and the firefighter. In the former role, Doha draws close to organisations and regimes committed to Islamic revolution and the practice of violence in support of this goal. Its assistance to such organisations is vital, and can take the form of domiciling, provision of finances, facilitation of safe passage, and a variety of other aspects.

Doha’s provision of these services is not doled out at random. Rather, it is one aspect of a broader strategic orientation in which Qatar has over the last two decades enthusiastically fanned the flames of instability and Islamist revolt across the Middle East. Thus, the emirate’s slick and lavishly funded al-Jazeera channel offered enthusiastic support to Islamist forces seeking to bring down pro-western regimes in Tunisia and Egypt, Doha offered financial backing to jihadi groups in Syria (including the now ruling Hayat Tahrir al Sham organisation, currently engaged in an undeclared war against Syria’s minorities), Qatar offered residence and a platform to the late Sheikh Yusuf Qaradawi, the most prominent Muslim Brotherhood publicist and preacher of his day. And so on.

But alongside this fire-setting activity, Qatar has presented itself to the west, and to Israel, as an appropriate mediator, a douser of the very fires it helps to set. Precisely because of its cultivated links and relations with the groups and individuals fomenting instability, it has been able to present itself as a supposedly indispensable mediator – with the Taliban, for example, vis a vis the United States, and with Hamas, in regard to Israel. It has been a remarkably successful strategy. Using it, the emirs of Qatar have parlayed themselves and their tiny, gas-rich state to a seat at the top tables of Middle East diplomacy.

Permitting Doha to pursue this strategy has not been a cost-free exercise. Following illusions and mirages in the Middle East rarely is. In Israel, the massacres of October 7, 2023, were the result of a long period in which the Israeli security and political system laboured under a series of delusions. Qatar was at the very least an enthusiastic facilitator of these delusions, and may well have played a more active role in their formulation and dissemination. The central illusion, which led directly to the situation in which less than 700 IDF soldiers were stationed at the border when 3000 jihadist gunmen rushed it on the morning of October 7, was that the Hamas rulers of Gaza had become content with administering the Strip, were deterred by Israel’s strength and were hence keen on a quiet life. Qatar, with the agreement of Israeli governments who had bought this illusion, provided $30 million per month to Hamas-controlled Gaza in the pre-Oct 7 period. Ostensibly to facilitate Gaza’s transition to peaceful co-existence with its larger neighbour, and, as it turned out, to grease the wheels of the Gaza Islamists’ preparations for war.

The extent to which Qatar had penetrated Israel’s political-security nexus has since become clear. The myriad strands of Qatari influence may well have extended into the Israeli Prime Minister’s Bureau itself. Three former senior officials of the bureau are currently on trial in Israel, suspected of multiple offences related to their lobbying work for Qatar, conducted at the same time that they were employed in the highest sanctum of Israeli policymaking.

But Doha’s influence was broader, and deeper. It has long been known in Israel that many former security officials, seeking business opportunities after concluding their service, found their way to contracts and involvement with Doha. What were the messages travelling down the multiple channels of communication, formal and informal, that Doha maintained into influential Israeli circles prior to October 7? How far did such messages contribute to the fatal paralysis of mind which gripped Jerusalem with regard to Hamas and Gaza in that period? Most of this is still submerged beneath the water line, awaiting investigation when the fighting is over. But the implications of what is already known are grave.

This week’s strike on Doha suggests that Israel has now awakened to the role played by Qatar, and no longer feels bound to indulge it. Rather, the normal rule according to which a state that domiciles a terror group may find its territory targeted by another state that is at war with said terror group, is now to be applied also to Qatar. This is an opening of daylight onto one of the strangest and murkiest corners of the opaque Middle East strategic picture. It is long overdue.

Originally published under the title “Israel’s Daring Air Strike on Hamas in Qatar Was Long Overdue.”