Doha: The Israeli attack that targeted residential compounds of several Hamas leaders in Doha on Tuesday was not a transient security event but a turning point in which the Israeli entity crossed all red lines, Palestinian political analysts and pundits stressed.
According to Qatar News Agency, even if the proclaimed objective of the attack was intended to target the leadership of the Palestinian negotiating delegation, its broader objectives were to undermine the Qatar-led mediation efforts aimed at halting the Israeli aggression against the Gaza Strip and preventing the Israeli entity from proceeding with the war of extermination.
Wesam Afifa, a Palestinian researcher and political analyst, highlighted to QNA that the assassination attempt against Hamas leaders in Doha failed but represented a key turning point on the regional and global stages. The attempt did not target Palestinian personalities alone, but also Qatar’s standing as a pivotal regional player in conflict resolution efforts and a key mediator in the Palestinian issue throughout the recent decade, Wesam underlined.
Wesam further pointed out that over the past years, Qatar has consolidated its stature as a key mediator in this issue, whether in terms of leveraging pacification and reconstruction efforts or overseeing negotiation tracks. This role, he said, earned US-backed international legitimacy, but this Israeli targeting raises significant questions about the future of this role and Qatar’s status in the regional balance of power.
Political analyst and Director General of the Palestinian Center for Policy Research and Strategic Studies (Masarat), Hani Al Masri, highlighted that this assassination attempt, whether succeeded or otherwise, was a major crime and a flagrant breach of all red lines, stressing that it was not only an encroachment upon Hamas but upon Qatar per se, as a fundamental broker in the negotiations and one of the key non-NATO strategic allies of the United States.
What unfolded there lays bare, once again, that the far-right government of the Israeli entity is steadfastly moving towards achieving its stated and unstated objectives by waging its war on the Palestinian people, Al Masri highlighted. Al Masri further evinced that the international coalition backing recognition of Palestinian statehood, if it is to be taken seriously, cannot merely content itself with rejecting the aggression and calling for recognition. Rather, it must concentrate its efforts on bringing the occupation to an end.
This entails the imposition of stringent sanctions, the pursuit of a genuine boycott, and the initiation of legal accountability measures against the occupying power, culminating in the suspension of Israel’s membership in the United Nations through a resolution of the General Assembly, he outlined.
Director of the Center for Political and Developmental Studies in Gaza, Rami Khreis, for his part, stressed that this attack was a dangerous precursor by targeting a negotiating delegation on the soil of a mediator, which is deemed an outright crime and a violation of an independent nation’s sovereignty that would erode the international legitimacy of any negotiation process, triggering action on the part of international courts and the United Nations.