I am writing this in the wake of the sucker punch Israel delivered in Doha, seeking to eliminate the leadership of Hamas. In the aftermath, we saw the arrival at a critical juncture leading us to a familiar position as efforts to reach a ceasefire intersected with broader questions around Palestine/Israel and perhaps a push to compel all parties to embrace a durable peace in a region that resists conflict resolution.
The first response to the incident was questioning whether the United States had been complicit; indeed, there is an American military base, the Al-Udeid Air Base, located near the targeted site. The White House denied prior knowledge or consultation, claiming that it was only made privy to the assault moments prior, when the Pentagon tracked the attacking aircraft. That is, Washington sought to distance itself, but it was not prepared to end the war in the region.
Israel, meanwhile, became more determined to kill and destroy in Gaza; its failure in Doha created an added incentive for more violence to push the Palestinians out of Gaza City and cram them into the south in preparation for what everyone knows amounts to displacement. It is not a coincidence that Israeli officials (by Prime Minister Netanyahu and his allies) began presenting long-term visions for “reshaping the Middle East” and establishing a “Greater Israel.” The response was predictable: condemnation, calls for meetings, demands for a ceasefire, and perhaps, just perhaps, efforts by the Trump administration to end the bloodshed and prevent even more graves from piling up.
The developments that followed the Doha strike mirrored those that had come before: a theater of war and fierce battles. In truth, these are wars and battles waged unilaterally, with the other side only rarely meeting them with “resistance.” The side waging the conflict is not satisfied with Gaza alone. It is also operating in the West Bank, seeking to turn it into another Gaza: a land of death, destruction, and displacement. Anyone familiar with Israeli political discourse will find familiar tactics: talk of a confrontation of the “few” and the “many,” or the “minority” and the “majority.”
We saw Mongols- in the time of Genghis Khan and his heirs, and Germany under Hitler and the Nazis- have the same fits as hubris drove them to invade and occupy several places at once. Before and after the Doha raid, we saw regular strikes on Sanaa, Beirut, Damascus, Tehran, Gaza, and the West Bank, as well as threats that others would meet the same fate.
The Israeli establishment and political elite see a historic opportunity to realize the dreams inherent to the Zionist idea: taking the Jews from the hell of the Holocaust to the paradise of hegemony and control where none of their commands are disobeyed.
The failed attack in Doha was not a comprehensive failure. It left its mark and sent a message about Israel’s pursuit of leaders, since the leaders, not the resistance, remain. The cognitive dissonance here only drives Israel to greater violence.
Historically, the existence of such a terrifying effort to alter the great balance of power in the world’s regions has spurred the creation of a counter-alliance: a more intelligent, cunning, and powerful coalition that exploits the weaknesses that conquerors acquire as a result of their expansion and overextension. That is what happened against Napoleon, who rode the horse of the French Revolution and the momentum, chaos, and ideological and political schism it produced. However, his hubris left him all the way to Moscow, after which the Congress of Vienna brought France down to size, making it then, and only then, a part of the European continent. The same story repeated itself in the World Wars launched by imperial Germany and later Nazi Germany, which ended once the balance was restored.
The Arab states, foremost among them those that have made peace with Israel, must distinguish between Israel as a nation with borders established by the 1947 partition, and an imperial Israel that wants to become “Greater” and to reshape the Middle East in line with the dreams of Netanyahu, Bezalel Smotrich, and others like them who stand against all those who take the side of justice and humanity, whether within Israel or outside the country.
The Arab leaders who, each in his own country, are pursuing the greatest civilizational renaissance in modern history, must safeguard their visions not only from extremists, charlatans, fundamentalists, and the militias who seek to undermine statehood as a principle and efforts to establish a Palestinian state, but also from their counterparts in Israel.
