News analysis
Israel’s shock strike in Switzerland of the desert risks US isolation in Middle East
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Smoke billowing after explosions in the Qatari capital Doha on Sept 9.
PHOTO: AFP
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AUSTIN, Texas – The unprecedented Israeli attack on a clutch of villas in Qatari capital Doha marks a dramatic point of departure in the Middle East.
It is a signal that Israel has slammed the door shut on diplomacy with Hamas, and that Qatar can no longer remain the Switzerland of the Middle East with a semblance of neutrality and serving as the site for meetings between adversaries.
The Sept 9 attack
“Israel initiated it, Israel conducted it and Israel takes full responsibility,” Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said after launching the strikes that came as Hamas leaders were meeting to consider a US proposal for a ceasefire to end the nearly two-year-long bloody conflict in the Gaza Strip.
Hamas said its top leadership had survived the attack, which killed six people.
US President Donald Trump spoke with Mr Netanyahu and Qatar’s Prime Minister, Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al Thani, following the attack. He assured the Qatari leader that such an attack would not happen again on his soil.
In a Truth Social post, Mr Trump said he was informed about the attack
“However, unfortunately, too late to stop that attack,” the President posted in his only comment on the attack.
“I view Qatar as a strong ally and friend of the US and feel very badly about the location of the attack,” Mr Trump wrote, adding that the “unfortunate incident could serve as an opportunity for peace”.
At a White House briefing, press secretary Karoline Leavitt sidestepped questions about whether the President had attempted to dissuade Mr Netanyahu.
The strikes reflected Israel’s surmise that Hamas was not going to accept the ceasefire terms, which its leaders saw as a “humiliating surrender document”.
The US proposal called for the immediate release of all the remaining 48 hostages captured in the Oct 7, 2023, Hamas-led attack on Israel
“From Israel’s perspective, there was nothing left to negotiate,” said Professor Benjamin Radd, a Middle East expert and a lecturer in law and global studies at the University of California, Los Angeles.
“I don’t think that this would have happened without a green light from the US,” he added.
Mr Daniel Shapiro of the Atlantic Council’s Scowcroft Middle East Security Initiative and former US ambassador to Israel said Hamas leaders have been “dead men walking” since the Oct 7 attack, given Israel’s ability to find and target them.
“What kept them alive for this long was their role in negotiations to free Israeli hostages. And on that front, they proved to be limited in their utility after multiple rounds of failed negotiations,” he added.
There is no absence of boldness on the part of the Israeli leadership in undertaking this attack, said former US diplomat David Hale, who served as undersecretary of state for political affairs in the first Trump administration.
“It’s a reflection of an unstated and still evolving national security strategy post-Oct 7, 2023, in which the Israelis no longer feel that their security can be guaranteed if they are observing the taboos that may have restrained some of their activities in the past,” said Mr Hale, who is now with Washington’s Middle East Institute (MEI).
“What we see is an unbridled Israel, prepared to pre-empt attacks and deal with their enemies wherever they may be found.”
Israel is now gearing up for a major offensive aimed at taking over Gaza City
The attacks took place not far from Qatar’s Al Udeid Air Base, the regional headquarters for the US Central Command, the largest American military base in the Middle East that hosts thousands of American troops.
America’s major non-Nato ally became a favoured destination for Hamas leaders when they fled Syria’s civil war in 2011. It has long been playing the mediator and interlocutor in the regional crises that emerged.
That role of mediator could now become unavailable, with the prospect for negotiations fading from the horizon.
Said UCLA’s Prof Radd: “I think Qatar will have to ultimately take a side, no longer can they be like a Switzerland of the Middle East, accommodating everybody and favouring nobody. This might be the end of that phase of their diplomatic trajectory.”
In what amounted to a public chastisement, Mr Trump called the strike unhelpful to US or Israeli goals.
The President, however, spread his bets by also calling the Israeli goal of “eliminating Hamas” a worthy one.
“Unilaterally bombing inside Qatar, a sovereign nation and close ally of the US that is working very hard in bravely taking risks with us to broker peace, does not advance Israel or America’s goals.
“However, eliminating Hamas, who have profited off the misery of those living in Gaza, is a worthy goal,” he said.
Although they might not say so publicly, Arab nations will be happy to see the last of Hamas, which is seen as a proxy for Iran and a destabilising force.
Prof Radd suggested that the Hamas issue needed to be separated from the recognition of legitimate Palestinian aspirations.
“So the US and Israel have to figure out a way to eliminate Hamas as a functioning entity but not depart from recognition of Palestinian nationalist aspirations. That would leave the US isolated,” he said.
Asked what he saw as the central question for Mr Trump, Prof Radd noted that it would help if the US President laid out the “predicating steps” for the creation of a Palestinian state.
“Is there any circumstance under which President Trump would see the creation of a Palestinian state? If so, when would that happen? What would it look like?” he asked.
Mr Brian Katulis, a senior fellow at MEI, said a deeper strategy that does not sideline the Palestinians is needed.
“Not one that is only symbolic in recognising the state of Palestine, but one that actually lifts up the concerns of the Palestinian people and says they are a key ingredient for peace and stability for Israelis and for people in the broader region,” he said.
“Sadly, I don’t think we’ve had this from the current administration or the one before it,” he said, noting that the US had refused to grant visas to Palestinian Authority leaders such as Mr Mahmoud Abbas, who opposes Hamas, to attend the United Nations assembly debates in New York.
Prof Radd predicted stability, but without peace, for Gaza in the foreseeable future.
“We are moving further away from peace and towards stability. And that stability can happen without peace,” he said.
“It can happen in a status of occupation, in a power imbalance where one side dominates over another and enforces a stability that is not predicated by a mutual understanding.”
