Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu launched an airstrike on Hamas leaders in Qatar after Mossad declined a ground operation. Photo / Getty Images
When Israel announced Tuesday it had launched a strike on senior Hamas leaders in Qatar, one security agency was notably missing from the official statements: the Mossad.
That’s because Israel’s external intelligence agency had declined to carry out a plan it had drawn up in recent weeks to use agents on the ground to assassinate Hamas leaders, according to two Israelis familiar with the matter who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive information.
The Mossad director David Barnea opposed killing the Hamas officials in Qatar partly because such an action could rupture the relationship he and his agency had cultivated with the Qataris, who had been hosting Hamas and mediating ceasefire talks between the militant group and Israel, these people said.
The Mossad’s reservations about a ground operation ultimately influenced how the strike was carried out and perhaps its likelihood of success. They reflected a broader opposition within the Israeli security establishment to the attack ordered by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. While Israeli security officials widely agree all Hamas leaders, including those living overseas, should be eventually pursued and killed, many questioned the timing of the operation, given the Hamas officials were gathering in Qatar, a major US ally, and that these officials were mulling a proposal from US President Donald Trump to free Israeli hostages held in Gaza in exchange for a ceasefire in the Gaza war.
Instead of deploying Mossad operatives, Israel on Tuesday turned to a secondary option: launching 15 fighter jets that fired 10 missiles from afar. Hamas said the airstrike failed to kill senior officials, including its acting leader Khalil al-Hayya. Instead, Hamas said, the attack killed several relatives and aides of its delegation as well as a Qatari officer. Israeli officials have so far declined to publicly share assessments of the outcome, but in the immediate aftermath it seemed “Israel did not get who they wanted”, according to a person familiar with the details of the operation who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorised to speak with the media.
It’s not clear whether a ground operation would have a higher chance of success, but last year Mossad operatives planted a bomb in the bedroom of the Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran, killing him. “This time, Mossad was unwilling to do it on the ground,” said one of the Israelis familiar with the matter, adding the agency viewed Qatar as an important intermediary in talks with Hamas.
Another Israeli familiar with the dissent from the agency questioned Netanyahu’s timing. “We can get them in one, two, or four years from now, and the Mossad knows how to do it,” the Israeli said, referring to the possibility of covertly assassinating Hamas leaders anywhere in the world. “Why do it now?”
Analysts say Netanyahu, who has been edging toward a full ground invasion of Gaza City, may have lost patience with the ceasefire negotiations.
“Barnea was known as someone who thought the Qatari mediation had value, and you don’t burn the Qatari mediators or the mediation channel,” said David Makovsky, a senior fellow at the Washington Institute. But Netanyahu “may have made up his mind that he’s going into Gaza City, believing the very latest negotiating proposal of Trump on the hostage release was getting zero traction from Hamas,” Makovsky added. “If this is the case, Netanyahu may have viewed the negotiating track as an unhelpful constraint on taking action on the ground.”
The Mossad did not respond to a request for comment. The Prime Minister’s office, which oversees the Mossad, did not respond to requests for comment.
Aside from Barnea, Israel Defence Forces chief of staff Lieutenant General Eyal Zamir, who has urged Netanyahu to accept a ceasefire deal, also objected to the timing of the strike for fear of derailing the negotiations, while Strategic Affairs Minister Ron Dermer and Defence Minister Israel Katz agreed with Netanyahu’s move to proceed, one of the Israelis familiar with the matter said. Nitzan Alon, the senior IDF officer in charge of hostage negotiations, was not invited to a Monday meeting to discuss the Doha operation because senior political leaders assumed he would voice opposition to a strike that might endanger hostages’ lives.
Current and former Israeli officials, including Netanyahu, have said they were driven to launch the Qatar airstrike on Tuesday because they had a rare window when key leaders of the militant group behind the October 7, 2023, attacks on Israel would be in one place. They were also forced to respond, they say, to an attack by Palestinian gunmen on Monday that killed six Israeli civilians in Jerusalem, which was claimed by Hamas, and an ambush in Gaza that killed four Israeli soldiers that same day.
Some Israeli officials say they calculated that Israel would repair relations with Qatar over time, much like Israel overcame the international outrage incurred during the 1970s and 1980s after Prime Minister Golda Meir ordered covert assassinations in European and Middle Eastern countries against Palestinian militants who had kidnapped and slain 11 Israeli athletes at the 1972 Olympics in Munich.
At a funeral in January, Barnea cited the story of Munich and said the Mossad was “committed to settling the score with the murderers who descended upon the Gaza envelope” in October 2023 and with those who planned the attacks.
For now, Israel is facing a diplomatic firestorm, with Qatar publicly condemning the airstrike as “state terrorism” and a betrayal of the mediation process.
Last weekend, US officials had submitted – and Trump publicly touted – a new US proposal that called for the release of 48 remaining Israeli hostages, alive and dead, in exchange for Trump directly overseeing negotiations for a permanent settlement of the war and disarmament of Hamas. Mediators found the offer had more “traction” among Hamas officials but Israel struck soon after, on Tuesday afternoon local time, according to a person briefed on the negotiations who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the sensitive diplomacy.
While it remains unclear whether or when ceasefire negotiations might resume, Qatari Prime Minister Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al Thani told the United Nations Security Council on Thursday that “we will continue our diplomatic role without hesitation to stop the bloodshed. … We cannot succumb to extremists”, he said in a reference to the Israeli Government.
Netanyahu, for his part, has accused Qatar of granting Hamas safe haven and hit back at countries critical of the attack. “I say to Qatar and all nations who harbour terrorists, you either expel them or you bring them to justice,” he said in an address on Wednesday. “Because if you don’t, we will.”
Political analysts and observers say that Netanyahu’s belligerence toward Qatar belies a complicated backstory: even though the Persian Gulf country has often been criticised by some Israeli officials for its proximity to Hamas, Qatar has hosted Hamas leaders for decades at the behest of Israel and successive US administrations and was asked to mediate previous conflicts between Israel and Hamas, beginning in 2014.
In 2018, Netanyahu and Qatar agreed to begin sending Qatari cash into Gaza as part of the Israeli leader’s strategy to maintain economic stability in the Hamas-run enclave. In exchange, the Mossad, which handles relationships with countries like Qatar with which Israel does not have formal diplomatic ties, opened an office in the Qatari capital, Doha, under former agency director Yossi Cohen, said Jonathan Schanzer, executive director of the Foundation for the Defence of Democracies, a Washington think tank that is supportive of Israel and critical of Qatar.
After the October 7 attacks by Hamas, senior Netanyahu aides, including national security adviser Tzachi Hanegbi, publicly praised Qatar as an “essential” player in the mediation process with Hamas, and Netanyahu dispatched Barnea and Cohen to Doha to begin indirect negotiations with the militant group to free Israeli hostages. Barnea travelled to Doha as recently as August 14, according to Israeli media, and even today, the agency believes Qatar remains a “viable actor” vis-a-vis Hamas, one of the Israelis familiar with the matter said.
Nimrod Novik, a former Israeli official and analyst at the New York-based Israel Policy Forum, said Netanyahu may have been motivated to strike Qatar to derail a Trump administration proposal that he did not like or to send a cautionary message to Persian Gulf countries seeking to promote Palestinian statehood.
Another Netanyahu consideration may have been to distance himself from a country with whom his domestic critics say he is too close, Novik said. Earlier this year, Netanyahu’s relationship with Qatar again became the subject of controversy in Israel after Israeli authorities began investigating allegations that several of the Prime Minister’s aides were on Qatar’s payroll.
“The same person who asked Qatar to host Hamas, to fund Hamas, and to mediate with Hamas has suddenly become hostile to the same regime,” Novik said. “If you want to convey ‘I don’t share the same allegiance to Qatar’ as [my former aides], then nothing can nail that objective more than a military strike in Qatar.”
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