Israel’s daring strike on a Hamas redoubt in Doha on Monday apparently failed to kill its intended targets, leaving the leadership alive and the operation’s outcome uncertain.
What it did succeed in doing, however, was to unleash a storm of questions: Why now? How will this affect ties with Qatar, a crucial player in the hostage talks? And what did Washington know, and when?
To find some clarity, it is worth recalling that this is hardly the first time Israel has wrestled with the dilemmas of timing, targets, and the diplomatic fallout of striking beyond its borders.
The first question is “why now?”
One of the criticisms of the decision to strike is that it might harm the hostage negotiations, and that those who were targeted, including Khalil al-Hayya, Zaher Jabarin, Mousa Abu Marzouk, and others, could have been eliminated earlier or later. To move against them just as the negotiations were said to be reaching a sensitive stage, according to this reasoning, seemed reckless. Then again, “sensitive stages” in the negotiations have been reported many times before.
One reason for the timing appears simple: the opportunity presented itself. It is not every day that the masterminds of countless terrorist attacks gather in the same room, and you know precisely where that room is. When the stars align like that, the argument goes, you act
.And if you don’t, you risk being haunted by “what if.”
Just as happened in September 2003, at the height of the Second Intifada. At that time, then Prime Minister Ariel Sharon faced what intelligence officials called a once-in-a-generation chance to eliminate Hamas’s leadership in a single strike.
Sheikh Ahmed Yassin had gathered his top commanders and political chiefs in a three-story Gaza apartment. This meeting represented what intelligence officials called “Yassin’s dream team,” the complete political and military leadership of the organization that had orchestrated countless suicide bombings and terrorist attacks against Israeli civilians.
Avi Dichter, who was then the head of the Israel Security Agency (Shin Bet), identified the opportunity and described it as a “historic opportunity to cause irreparable damage to the terrorist group.”
Despite having the Hamas leadership in Israel’s crosshairs, Sharon ultimately decided against the massive strike, heeding then chief of staff Moshe Ya’alon, who feared large-scale collateral damage if the building was destroyed.
Instead, Sharon approved a compromise: a smaller, precise missile aimed at the third floor, where intelligence believed the meeting was taking place. In fact, the Hamas leaders were on the first floor. The missile struck the wrong level, and the leadership escaped unscathed.
That failure has fueled endless speculation about what might have been. A chance like that never arose again. So when one did on Tuesday in Doha, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu seized it. One wonders whether the memory of September 2003 factored into his calculation.
Then there is Qatar itself. Israel has no formal diplomatic ties with the Gulf emirate, but enjoys significant business links and informal arrangements. Qatar has also become the key mediator with Hamas, a role that has elevated its global profile far beyond its size.
Will this strike rupture those ties and sink hopes that Qatar, a state with a close US relationship and host to America’s largest regional military base, might one day normalize relations with Israel and even join the Abraham Accords?
History suggests otherwise
Remember Mahmoud al-Mabhouh? He was a senior Hamas official and weapons procurer who was found dead in his hotel room in Dubai in January 2010. The Dubai police quickly concluded that he was killed in a sophisticated operation involving a large team of operatives using forged foreign passports.
Even though Israel never admitted involvement, the assassination was widely believed to have been carried out by the Mossad. Netanyahu, when asked at the time, offered only a vague comment: “Israel never confirms and never denies these kinds of reports.”
This was consistent with Israel’s long-standing policy of ambiguity regarding targeted killings abroad -- an ambiguity it did not adhere to on Monday when, about 15 minutes after the strike in Doha, Netanyahu, in a transparent attempt to clear the US of any involvement, took sole and independent responsibility.
The Mabhouh assassination occurred just as Israel and the UAE, united by a shared fear of Iran, were flirting with closer ties. Mossad chief Meir Dagan even proposed drone sales to Abu Dhabi in exchange for cooperation on Iran. After tens of millions of dollars had changed hands, Israel’s defense ministry eventually blocked the sale, souring the atmosphere. When Mabhouh was killed soon after, the budding relationship froze.
But not for long. Joint interests kept drawing the countries together, and the crisis was eased when Israel reportedly assured the Emiratis in 2012 that such operations would not be repeated on their soil. Dialogue and cooperation resumed, especially in intelligence and technology, eventually culminating in the Abraham Accords.
The lesson: assassinations of Hamas terrorists on Gulf soil need not doom long-term relationships.
Which brings us to the third and fourth questions: What did the US know, and how does US President Donald Trump act when he wants to rein in Israel?
For answers, one need not look back decades, but just three months. On the final day of the 12-Day War in Iran in June, Tehran fired ballistic missiles at Israel after a ceasefire had taken hold.
Netanyahu and Defense Minister Yisrael Katz were infuriated and wanted to send an unmistakable message to Iran that it would not tolerate any violation of the ceasefire, and dispatched fighter planes to bomb Tehran.
Trump, who brokered the ceasefire, was furious and called Netanyahu, ordering him to call off the attack, something the prime minister did, with the jets turning around in midair, though one plane continued on and hit a soft target outside Tehran to save face.
The episode showed that when Washington truly wants to stop an Israeli attack, it can.
The details of when exactly the US caught wind of an Israeli attack on Doha are foggy, but according to the president’s telling, the US military learned of the attack and contacted the White House. The White House informed Trump, and he called Mideast envoy Steven Witkoff, who has close ties to the Qataris, and told him to give the Qataris a heads-up.
What stands out here is not that the Qataris were tipped off, but that the call was to them, and not to Netanyahu, to halt the attack -- as was done back in June.
For all the noise surrounding Doha, the outlines are recognizable: opportunity, controversy, diplomatic fallout, and American intervention. Israel takes advantage of an opportunity, the Arab world protests, Washington scrambles to contain the damage, and eventually pragmatism overrides outrage.
If the past is any guide, today’s uproar will be drowned out tomorrow by the relentless churn of events. Because that is so often the pattern: what feels at the moment like something unprecedented and transformative is, in the end, a recurrence of things we have seen in the past.