Israeli Security Source: Failed Qatar Assassination Targeted Hamas’ Khaled Meshal

An Israeli security source told me that Israel’s failed assassination attempt in Qatar targeted all of Hamas’ senior leadership, the best known of whom is Khaled Meshal. The others present:

• Ghazi Hamad, is the second senior Hamas official present at the meeting who has since appeared publicly.
• Tahir al-Nunu, who gave an interview to Al Jazeera
• Also present was Hamas leader in the Gaza Strip and head of the negotiating team, Khalil al-Hayya
• Zahir Jabarin, a Hamas leader in the West Bank
• Nizar Awadallah, Hamas’s senior figure in Gaza
• Khaled Meshal, Hamas leader abroad
• Mousa Abu Marzouk, a Hamas founder and former head of the political bureau
• Hossam Badran, a senior member released in the Shalit deal; and Izzat al-Rishq, a senior Hamas official abroad

Middle East Eye’s David Hearst alludes to this in the above video, in which he recounts a failed assassination attempt on Meshal in Amman in 1997.  Then, Meshal’s security detail captured the assassins and handed them to Jordanian security.  Pres. Bill Clinton forced then-PM Netanyahu to provide the antidote to the poison administered by the killers.  Thereafter, King Hussein forced Israel to agree to make no further attempts on Meshal’s life while in Jordan.

The source tells me that Ariel Sharon, who later became prime minister, said: “We will assassinate Meshal. But we won’t do it in Jordan.”  Of course, he said nothing about Qatar.  And there is no Bill Clinton to enforce such an agreement. In fact, according to “Israeli sources” and an Israeli TV report, Donald Trump gave the green light to this operation until, of course, he discovered it failed.  Only then did he change his tune and say he was “very unhappy.”  If Meshal had died, he undoubtedly would have felt quite differently.

Hearst notes that Hamas security procedures saved the lives of the negotiating team meeting to consider ceasefire a proposal.  The members were ushered to a different location for their meeting and left their cell phones behind.  Mossad-AMAN intelligence didn’t account for this change of plans and hence, failed its objective.

Israel failed again in its decades-long effort to eliminate Meshal.  It’s likely that someday it will succeed.  If/when it does, it will have achieved little.  Hamas, as I and other analysts have noted, is an idea in addition to being a physical entity.  You cannot kill an idea.  You may kill its adherents. But there will always be others to take up the mantle.  Even if it had succeeded–a few tactical victories mean nothing if the overall strategy fails.

The ceasefire charade

One can’t fault Meshal for believing they could negotiate a ceasefire. However, the truth is that there is no ceasefire; there will be no ceasefire; the very idea of a ceasefire is a fig leaf. It permits Israel to claim it wants one, while concealing its real intent: refusal.

There cannot be a ceasefire because Netanyahu doesn’t want one. In fact, there cannot be one because his political life depends on there not being one–it depends instead on there being war. Without war, he is toast. 56% of the Israeli population wants nothing to do with him. He is one of the most unpopular prime Ministers in recent history. 76% do not trust his government.

Additionally, he is hated by one of Israel’s most important constituencies: hostages families and their supporters. In a normal society, citizens who’ve made the ultimate sacrifice for their country are honored, as are their surviving family members.  In Israel, it is precisely the opposite. The hostage families are despised by government ministers. Especially the Judeo-Nazis like Smotrich and Ben Gvir. They view the families as a nuisance, an obstacle to their messianic vision of Judeo-supremacy “from the river to the sea:” an empire matching King David’s– including Gaza, the West Bank, southern Syria and Lebanon.

There will be no Palestinians in this realm. Only Jews. And even more exclusively, Jews who share their messianic zeal for a Davidic kingdom with a rebuilt Temple, which would necessitate destruction of Al Aqsa. This society would only consist of settlers and their fellow Torah-true Jews. The rest can either go to hell (i.e. emigrate) or remain as obedient Zionist zombies, acquiescing to the zealots.

That is why the hostages don’t matter. They’re in the way of Judeo-triumphalism: a hegemonic vision of Judaization throughout the region. It involves the purification of Eretz Yisrael. The elimination of Palestinians who defile the land of “our forefathers.”  This parallels the Nazis’ concept of racial purity and supremacy of the Aryan race, which demanded the eradication of the Jewish people. Thus, today’s Palestinians are the latter-day European Jews eliminated in the Holocaust.

Debacle in Qatar

The operation in Qatar failed. It killed minor Hamas figures and a Qatari security official. This failure has resulted in a regional and international crisis. Netanyahu not only attacked the sovereign territory of an Arab state not in a state of war or conflict with Israel; not only did he attack individuals under the protection of Qatar; but the attack itself failed, and failed miserably.

Not only did the IDF fail to achieve its purpose, Israel has provoked a furor in the Arab world. That, in turn will, at best destroy the Abraham Accords; or at worst provoke immense hostility within the Arab world, destroying an already fragile normalization process.

Attacking Iran, as Israel did several months ago, is one thing: it is not an Arab country and its Shia Islam is in conflict with Sunni Islam, which prevails in much of the Middle East.

In contrast, every major Arab leader in the region has flown to Qatar to attend the funeral of the six martyrs. They are also paying their respects to the emir of Qatar, who is leading the effort to secure a ceasefire. Or was leading it. This will certainly end that role.

No other Arab state will step in to replace it. The ceasefire will be an orphan.  The four members of the Abraham Accords will either withdraw; or risk looking like craven fools and Israeli stooges.

The attack marks an ignominious Israeli rejection of Arab normalization. It is a big “fuck you” to the Abraham Accords and its behind-the-scenes supporter, Saudi Arabia. For years, there were rumors, undoubtedly leaked by Israeli sources, that the Saudis would join the the club imminently. That didn’t happen. It certainly will not happen now. Netanyahu has seen to that.

He has thrown in all his chips with the Judeo-Nazis, who have him by the proverbial balls. If he balks, they will bail. Both of the parties know that. Thus, he understands what he must do: continue the mass killing, the assassinations, the nose-thumbing at grieving families.

It contradicts every rule in democratic societies. In Israel, the will of the people is subordinated to the interest of the dictator and his toadies.  There is a word for this: fascism. I call it Judeo-Nazism, because Aryanism and Israeli fascism share so much DNA.

The Mossad has leaked to the media a claim it opposed the attack, because it would endanger ceasefire efforts. The Washington Post reports that the agency refused to conduct a ground operation, which forced the IDF to mount an aerial attack.  However an Israeli security official informed me that the Mossad participated in attack preparations, despite its director’s claim to the contrary. The purpose of the false claim is to retain Barnea’s credibility in negotiations with Qatar/Hamas. Though why the latter would wish to do so now. is incomprehensible.

Failure of UN and member states to act

The attack and its failure puts even greater pressure on foreign states to intercede against the genocide. Their response has been a push for a Palestinian state under the questionable assumption that it will end the conflict.

The UN General Assembly passed a resolution calling for “irreversible steps” toward a Palestinian state. It called for full recognition and membership in the UN itself.

The next step will be recognition by several European states, most notably France, Belgium and Australia. They announced their intent to do so at the UN General Assembly this month. Canada and the UK have also indicated they plan to recognize Palestine:

While 146 members of the UN already back a Palestinian state, another 10 or so, including France, Norway, Spain, Ireland and the United Kingdom are expected to join their ranks later this month.

That leaves the US and Israel in the lurch. They notably joined “powerhouses” and far-right regimes like Micronesia, Argentina, Hungary, Micronesia, Nauru, Palau, Papua New Guinea, Paraguay, and Tonga in voting No. Such “auspicious company” is right in Trump’s wheelhouse, just where he belongs (and wants to be).

What comes after recognition? A Palestinian state requires sovereignty. If Israel blocks all the trappings of statehood including banking, trade, security and diplomatic relations, there cannot be such a state. Israel can easily stifle these institutions, depriving Palestine of the vital lifeblood of national sovereignty.

Israeli rejectionism and the world’s ineffectuality in combatting it, further erodes the two-state solution as a viable plan for resolving the conflict. When will the rest of the world realize two states is a dead concept? How long will people have to die? Will there be any Gazans left in Gaza by that time? Or will they be long gone? Scattered to the wind.

Gaza is the worst genocide since the Rohingya mass slaughter. When the final accounting is made, the former may even surpass it.

After WWII, the world banded together to hold Nazi war criminals accountable; and to create an international body (the UN) designed to prevent future genocides.

The UN has failed as an institution. The legacy of its members states, if the present is any indicator, will be colossal failure. It will embolden dictators to commit similar crimes without fear of accountability. They will literally get away with murder.

Serial genocides mark the descent of human civilization into an abyss, and are a prelude to a potential human extinction event.