Here’s Why Israel’s Failed Assassination Strike on Doha is Not Surprising

September 9, 2025

By Robert Inlakesh

Israel’s goals in the region are clear, as Netanyahu has stated time and time again, he seeks “total victory” in a “seven-front war”. The message is clear; it is a statement to the entire world, Israel does what it wants and when it wants. Nobody will stop it.

Immediately upon confirmation of Israel’s airstrikes against the Qatari Capital, aimed at assassinating leaders within the Hamas movement, commentators and analysts labelled it shocking, even unprecedented. However, the flagrant violation of international law was not surprising.

The airstrikes carried out by the Israeli air force, publicly announced by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, resulted in the murder of five people, but according to Hamas itself, none of the movement’s leaders were killed. Despite Israel’s insistence that the assassination strikes were successful, they appear to have, in fact, failed dramatically in taking out Hamas officials. 

The two main targets of the Israeli operation appear to have been Zaher Jabareen and Khalil al-Hayya, both senior leaders in Hamas and essential figures in its ceasefire negotiating team. As the Palestinian political party was in the process of figuring out a new response to the latest US-sponsored Gaza ceasefire proposal, the Israeli strike appears to have at least temporarily halted this process, as the Israeli military clears the way for its latest military operation, which they say will seek to occupy Gaza City.

While analysts have reacted to the attack by suggesting that the assassination attempt was “unprecedented” and “shocking”, it was anything but this. In July of 2024, the Israelis carried out the assassination of former Hamas leader Ismail Hanniyeh in Tehran, less than twenty-four hours after he had stood side-by-side with then newly elected Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian.

Following the assassination of Yemeni Prime Minister Ahmed al-Rahawi, along with a number of his cabinet members in Sana’a, on August 28, the Israeli military’s chief of staff, Eyal Zamir, made it clear that the strikes were part of a large series of planned attacks. 

Zamir stated that “the IDF is acting offensively, with initiative and operational superiority across all arenas and at all times”. When commenting on the announced assassination of Hamas military spokesperson Abu Obeida, he asserted that it “joins a series of significant IDF strikes in Yemen, Lebanon, Syria and other arenas,” and was “not the end”. He also warned that “the bulk of Hamas’s ruling leadership that remains is abroad, and we will reach them too”.

The night before its attack in Doha, the Israelis also launched a drone strike against the ‘Family’ boat of the Gaza Freedom Flotilla, in Tunisian waters. The specific vessel struck was the boat on which world-renowned activist Greta Thunberg was aboard. Also, within the space of that same twenty-four-hour period, Israel had carried out countless airstrikes throughout Syria and southern Lebanon, and continued its routine bombardment of Gaza.

For those who say that such an attack on a friendly nation, like Qatar, is what makes this attack so unpredictable, on September 25, 1997, the Israeli Mossad used fake Canadian passports in a failed attempt to assassinate then Hamas leader Khaled Meshaal in Amman, Jordan. 

The incident backfired as Hamas bodyguards managed to foil the plot, yet Meshaal was administered a poison, which Israel was forced to produce an antidote for and to release high-profile Palestinian prisoners, in order to save their normalization agreement with the Hashemite Kingdom.

This brings us to the fact that an attack on a Gulf nation is also far from unprecedented. On January 19, 2010, Israeli Mossad agents acquired multiple fake European and Australian passports in order to infiltrate the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and assassinate a Hamas military leader called Mahmoud al-Mahbouh, in a hotel located in Dubai.

Since October 7, 2023, the Israelis have launched assassination strikes in Gaza, the West Bank, Lebanon, Yemen, Syria, Iraq, Iran, and now Qatar. Israel also carried out a bombing attack on the consular segment of Iran’s former embassy in Syria last year, which Western nations refused to condemn.

Although Qatar hosts the US’s Central Command and is one of the closest actors in the region to Western powers, the statements that were issued on the Israeli strike from the likes of the UK called simply for both sides to refrain from escalating, expressing concern, and not open condemnation. As for the US, it is evidently the one who provided the greenlight and had even recently moved air defense systems, meant to guard its forces in Doha, over to the Israelis.

This sort of a move was only ever a matter of when and if the Israelis decided that there is simply nothing standing in their way of carrying out airstrikes on Qatar every other week, other than perhaps the fact that it is expensive.

Israel’s goals in the region are clear, as Netanyahu has stated time and time again, he seeks “total victory” in a “seven-front war”. In his speech addressing the attack on Doha, the Israeli Premier even stated that the strikes were targeting what he calls the “Axis of Evil”, or as the rest of the world knows it, the Iranian-led “Axis of Resistance”. 

The message is clear; it is a statement to the entire world, Israel does what it wants and when it wants. Nobody will stop it. Take, for example, the United Kingdom, which claims to be taking action against the Israelis by recognizing Palestine at the United Nations General Assembly, but it is inviting Israel’s President Isaac Herzog to London for a friendly visit later this week. Herzog openly praised the attack on Qatar and was quoted as proof of Israel’s intent to commit genocide in Gaza, at the International Court of Justice.

The UK Labour government, whose Cabinet and Prime Minister take money from the Zionist Lobby, designated Palestine Action a terrorist organization for trying to halt UK weapons transfers to Israel. The British government now continues to waste taxpayer funds and police resources, arresting hundreds of peace activists who protest against the Palestine Action terrorism ban. The UK also cracks down on activists and journalists opposed to the genocide in Gaza, weaponising terrorism legislation.

How is this connected to the Qatar bombing? It is quite simple; nobody holds the Israelis to account in any way that will actually force them to stop violating every conceivable tenet of international law. Israel is above the law, and the attack on Qatar will most likely pass without any repercussions. In fact, there is the likelihood that it may happen again, or next time it could be an attack on Egypt.

The only Arab nation that has imposed a price on Israel is Yemen; the rest have been complicit in one way or another, either directly aiding and supplying the Israeli war machine or by refusing to even take economic steps in an attempt to bring the genocide in Gaza to an end.

Israel will attack Syria, Lebanon, Yemen, Iraq, and of course Iran, again for sure. It will also act in whatever other arena it chooses, perhaps even Turkiye next. In fact, in Syria, the Israelis have murdered Turkish soldiers and destroyed Turkish-supplied equipment and bases where they have done construction.

For now, two objectives were achieved by the Israeli strike on Qatar. The first is that they have demonstrated they can strike anywhere with total impunity; the second is that they have at least temporarily killed the ceasefire negotiations.

Some are now expecting Qatar to respond in a meaningful way, yet due to how entrenched in the US camp it is, the Gulf nation is simply incapable of even defending itself militarily, and it is unlikely it will take the natural step of cutting off gas supplies like it did in 1973.

Doha is at the mercy of the United States and Israel. While reports indicate that the US had notified Qatar of the incoming attack, which could have contributed to the survival of the Hamas leadership, it was incapable of doing anything else about the attack, even if it wanted to.

(The Palestine Chronicle)

– Robert Inlakesh is a journalist, writer, and documentary filmmaker. He focuses on the Middle East, specializing in Palestine. He contributed this article to The Palestine Chronicle.