Israel’s Qatar Strike Undermines Sovereignty and International Law |
In the aftermath of this Israel-Qatar attack that seemed at first to threaten the Western interests in the Middle East, is a strange combination of verbal denunciation of Israeli violation of Qatari sovereignty with a political status quo in play.
Israel’s brazen September 8 missile strike on Doha in targeting senior Hamas negotiators has sent reactions all throughout the region, threatening to disrupt US brokered ceasefire talks. Further, it brought questions about Israel’s strategy and intent as well as their government’s disregard for global norms. Coming amid delicate diplomacy and on the soil of a key U.S. ally, the attack challenges assumptions about core-peripheral power, and underlines the ever-changing politics of the Middle East. In the Q/A that follows, Daniel Falcone interviews Richard Falk for insight into the consequences of this act and what it reveals about Israel’s objectives.
Daniel Falcone: Can you explain the incredible action of Israel in bombing Qatar? Why should we be surprised? Why shouldn’t we?
Richard Falk: At this stage an explanation seems premature, although not for media pundits. At best, we can venture speculations, but the complexities of the situation should encourage humility of interpretation. It would be naïve to give much weight to the words of top officials that issue from either Tel Aviv or Washington. Of course, the media stress so far is in three salient facets of the undertaking:
(1) Israel’s display of audacity in launching a missile against high value human targets in the capital of Qatar, location of the largest US military base in the region and the site of negotiations between Israel and Hamas.
(2) the unrelenting demonization of Hamas as a terrorist entity that deserves neither the protection of law and morality nor reactions of human sympathy for the loss of dedicated lives; and …
(3) the tightrope act of Donald Trump who combines his public disapproval of Israel for carrying out this military operation supposedly without a prior notification to the White House while reiterating his solidarity with Israel so far as destroying Hamas.
Obviously, Trump sheds no tears for the victims of the attack, nor is he incensed by Israel’s disregard of international law and morality at a time when it seemed an American ceasefire diplomacy proposal was on the brink of success. What Trump knew and said privately Netanyahu is high on the list of uncertainties.
From Israel’s perspective such a gathering of top Hamas leaders in Doha can be simply regarded as a target too tempting to forego, especially given their information about the location of their place of residence. If these top Hamas leaders had been assassinated, rather than apparently managing to avoid the missile strike, it would have allowed the Netanyahu government to claim a victory in relation to their post-October 7 commitment to exterminate Hamas for the attack, and diminished outrage at attacking an adversary negotiating team.
From a second perspective, the timing as well as the location of the attack is rather mystifying. These Hamas leaders were functioning as a negotiating team meeting in one place to prepare a unified response to the US proposal, unreliably reported as already accepted by Israel, to establish both a ceasefire and the return of the surviving ‘hostages’ in a prisoner exchange. Why would Israel undermine such a proposal by this sort of disruptive behavior when it had just days previously agreed to the negotiated solution, risking not only negative reactions throughout the region and beyond, but also, and more significantly, raising doubts about US unconditional support.
Although a US shift away from its long-term posture on Israel/Palestine remains a remote possibility, which cannot be totally ruled out given Trump’s style of egocentric and erratic leadership that is certainly capable of taking personal offense at Netanyahu’s subversion of Trump’s diplomatic initiative. Such a conjecture presupposes that Trump is being uncharacteristically truthful when finding himself betrayed by Israel, a country thought too dependent on the US to pull off such a diplomatic tactic. The alternative is that Trump is so beholden to Netanyahu that he conspired with him to project the image of diplomacy when the real plan was a counter-terrorist ploy to lure the Hamas leaders to Doha as a group, thinking they were going to put the finishing touches on a breakthrough agreement that will end the Gaza ordeal.
Yet from another perspective, apparently not yet discussed, but likely influential, is either Netanyahu or cabinet hardliners such as Ben-Gvir, Smotrich, and Katz, opposed a ceasefire at this time before the Gaza City ground operation was completed or missing the opportunity to decapitate the surviving Hamas leadership, and made their political weight felt with Netanyahu as........