Did the strikes in Qatar move the country closer toward ending the war and bringing the hostages home, or did it push both goals further away?
Here’s one thing that is clear: Israel’s strike against the Hamas compound in Doha was a gamble of the highest order.
It was not just another operation in Gaza or a routine bombing in southern Lebanon. This was different. It was a strike carried out on the soil of Qatar – a country often described as one of the closest non-NATO allies of the United States and a country with whom Israel has cultivated one of its most discreet but important regional relationships.
If the objective was to kill Hamas leaders believed to be meeting inside the compound, then the results three days later – several wounded but no confirmed fatalities – raise difficult questions. Violating the sovereignty of a country so close to Washington and potentially undermining sensitive negotiations that remain the only path to bringing the hostages home demands success. Anything less looks like failure.
Yet the bigger gamble is not operational. It is strategic: Will the move, whether successful or not, pressure Hamas into striking a deal? On one side of the ledger, Israeli officials argue that the men gathered in Doha represented the most hardline faction within Hamas – the intransigent group that for more than a year has blocked any agreement that could have freed Israeli hostages.
Removing them, the argument goes, could open space for other Hamas leaders to emerge – people who now understand that Doha does not guarantee immunity and that they too could become targets.
Even if the strike failed to eliminate its intended targets, Israeli officials claim it could still change calculations inside Hamas. Being hunted in what was supposed to be the safest of sanctuaries may push these leaders to reconsider. No one, after all, wants to be the next Khalil al-Hayya or Khaled Mashaal caught in Israeli crosshairs while sipping coffee in Doha.
The proof, however, will lie in what happens next. If talks collapse entirely, if Hamas retaliates by abusing the hostages still in captivity even more, if the Gaza City offensive resumes with no parallel diplomatic track, then Israel’s gamble will look reckless and possibly even self-defeating. At stake are the 20 hostages whom the defense establishment still believes are alive. Each day that passes without a deal puts their lives in greater peril.
The fear now is twofold: that Hamas, enraged by the Doha strike, will take out its fury on the captives, and that Washington – caught by surprise, with President Donald Trump reportedly learning of the strike only as it was underway and his envoy Steve Witkoff hearing of it from the Pentagon as the planes were detected – may lose interest in pushing for a deal.
Qatar, too, could reconsider its role. For all of its duplicity – funding Hamas on the one hand, mediating between Hamas and Israel on the other – Doha remains indispensable. Without Qatari leverage over Hamas, the talks could grind to a halt. Israel needs Qatar, even if it despises what Doha represents. That makes the decision to strike inside its capital all the more daring.
NONE OF this is to suggest that the men themselves were not legitimate targets. They were.
They should have met their end long ago. Khaled Mashal and Khalil al-Hayya are not mere political figures. They are the architects of October 7; some of them were seen, in chilling video footage, kneeling on the floor of a luxury office in Doha, praising Allah as live images of the massacre in southern Israel flashed across Al Jazeera. They built Hamas into the military machine that invaded Israel, killed 1,200 people, and dragged 251 into captivity.
Removing such men from the earth is not only justified; it is necessary. But the question remains: Does their removal – or even the attempt – help bring the hostages home? For Israelis, that is the only prism through which this strike will ultimately be judged. There is, however, another dimension. For Israel’s Arab partners – particularly those tied to normalization agreements – the Doha strike is not seen in isolation. It came against the backdrop of reports that Israel is considering annexation moves in parts of the West Bank. That possibility has already triggered alarm across the region.
The United Arab Emirates, one of the pillars of the Abraham Accords, has been warning Israel privately and publicly that annexation is a redline. It was precisely the shelving of annexation in 2020 that enabled the UAE to normalize ties with Israel despite the unresolved Palestinian question. If Israel now proceeds with annexation, Emirati officials argue, it will not just jeopardize the future of the accords; it will put them at risk of being canceled outright.
The message from Abu Dhabi is clear: Promises were made, and they must be honored. The perception now, particularly in Arab capitals, is that Israel is simultaneously risking its most important regional agreement, endangering the hostages, and undermining the very negotiations needed to secure their release.
Democratic circles in Washington are equally unsettled. For them, the strike feeds a narrative that Israel is acting unilaterally, disregarding US interests, and undercutting America’s efforts to engineer an end to the war. Already, the transition from Biden to Trump on Middle East policy has been fraught, and this latest episode only complicates things further.
None of this means Netanyahu’s gamble cannot still pay off. If pressure from the looming Gaza offensive, combined with the attempted strike in Doha, forces Hamas into softening its demands, then the risk will have been justified. If not – if the hostages remain in captivity, if talks collapse, if the Abraham Accords wobble, if Washington distances itself – this week’s gamble in Doha will be remembered not as a bold strategy but as reckless overreach.
That is the question Israel is left with now: Did this operation move the country closer toward ending the war and bringing the hostages home, or did it push both goals further away?