Assessing Israel’s Attack on Hamas Negotiating Team in Doha: Defying Law, Morality, and Prudence

TRANSCEND MEMBERS, 29 Sep 2025

Richard Falk | Global Justice in the 21st Century – TRANSCEND Media Service

Interview by Daniel Falcone on the 8 Sep Israeli attack on Hamas negotiating team in Doha, ending diplomatic effort, at least temporarily, to reach agreement on a US proposed/allegedly Israel approved ceasefire/hostage exchange arrangements. A disturbing development from many points of view, including the role of secure diplomatic settings for conflict resolution war-averting efforts.

***********************************

Israel’s Qatar Strike Undermines Sovereignty and International Law

23 Sep 2025 – In the aftermath of this Israel-Qatar attack that seemed at first to threaten the Western interests in the Middle East, is a strange combination of verbal denunciation of Israeli violation of Qatari sovereignty with a political status quo in play.

Israel’s brazen September 8 missile strike on Doha in targeting senior Hamas negotiators has sent reactions all throughout the region, threatening to disrupt US brokered ceasefire talks. Further, it brought questions about Israel’s strategy and intent as well as their government’s disregard for global norms. Coming amid delicate diplomacy and on the soil of a key U.S. ally, the attack challenges assumptions about core-peripheral power, and underlines the ever-changing politics of the Middle East. In the Q/A that follows, Daniel Falcone interviews Richard Falk for insight into the consequences of this act and what it reveals about Israel’s objectives.

Daniel Falcone: Can you explain the incredible action of Israel in bombing Qatar? Why should we be surprised? Why shouldn’t we?

Richard Falk: At this stage an explanation seems premature, although not for media pundits. At best, we can venture speculations, but the complexities of the situation should encourage humility of interpretation. It would be naïve to give much weight to the words of top officials that issue from either Tel Aviv or Washington. Of course, the media stress so far is in three salient facets of the undertaking:

(1) Israel’s display of audacity in launching a missile against high value human targets in the capital of Qatar, location of the largest US military base in the region and the site of negotiations between Israel and Hamas.

(2) the unrelenting demonization of Hamas as a terrorist entity that deserves neither the protection of law and morality nor reactions of human sympathy for the loss of dedicated lives; and …

(3) the tightrope act of Donald Trump who combines his public disapproval of Israel for carrying out this military operation supposedly without a prior notification to the White House while reiterating his solidarity with Israel so far as destroying Hamas.

Obviously, Trump sheds no tears for the victims of the attack, nor is he incensed by Israel’s disregard of international law and morality at a time when it seemed an American ceasefire diplomacy proposal was on the brink of success. What Trump knew and said privately Netanyahu is high on the list of uncertainties.

From Israel’s perspective such a gathering of top Hamas leaders in Doha can be simply regarded as a target too tempting to forego, especially given their information about the location of their place of residence. If these top Hamas leaders had been assassinated, rather than apparently managing to avoid the missile strike, it would have allowed the Netanyahu government to claim a victory in relation to their post-October 7 commitment to exterminate Hamas for the attack, and diminished outrage at attacking an adversary negotiating team.

From a second perspective, the timing as well as the location of the attack is rather mystifying. These Hamas leaders were functioning as a negotiating team meeting in one place to prepare a unified response to the US proposal, unreliably reported as already accepted by Israel, to establish both a ceasefire and the return of the surviving ‘hostages’ in a prisoner exchange. Why would Israel undermine such a proposal by this sort of disruptive behavior when it had just days previously agreed to the negotiated solution, risking not only negative reactions throughout the region and beyond, but also, and more significantly, raising doubts about US unconditional support.

Although a US shift away from its long-term posture on Israel/Palestine remains a remote possibility, which cannot be totally ruled out given Trump’s style of egocentric and erratic leadership that is certainly capable of taking personal offense at Netanyahu’s subversion of Trump’s diplomatic initiative. Such a conjecture presupposes that Trump is being uncharacteristically truthful when finding himself betrayed by Israel, a country thought too dependent on the US to pull off such a diplomatic tactic. The alternative is that Trump is so beholden to Netanyahu that he conspired with him to project the image of diplomacy when the real plan was a counter-terrorist ploy to lure the Hamas leaders to Doha as a group, thinking they were going to put the finishing touches on a breakthrough agreement that will end the Gaza ordeal.

Yet from another perspective, apparently not yet discussed, but likely influential, is either Netanyahu or cabinet hardliners such as Ben-Gvir, Smotrich, and Katz, opposed a ceasefire at this time before the Gaza City ground operation was completed or missing the opportunity to decapitate the surviving Hamas leadership, and made their political weight felt with Netanyahu as had happened previously. These Zionist extremists have seemed determined to seize the moment since October 7 to fulfill Israel endgame ambitions relating to land and people.

Recalling the early Zionist pre-Nazi whimsical airbrushing of the residents of Palestine by falsely contending that it was replacing ‘a people without land for a land without people,’ while just an ironic quip, can be retroactively interpreted as a start down a long path of Palestinian dehumanization and erasure in the 1920s if not before. What now defines the Zionist Project is to acquire for Israel as much land of Ottoman Palestine as possible with as few Palestinians living on it as feasible. Those Palestinians with the resolve to remain face the ensured prospect of suffering as a victimized, super-resilient minority in an Israeli apartheid state.

As with the timing of Iran’s ‘12 Day Iran War,’ June 13-24, 2025, as partly reflecting Israel’s successful effort to deflect attention from its increasingly condemned Gaza policies, the Doha timing may have partly been motivated by the hope of deflecting attention once again. These lines of interpretation are highly conjectural, difficult to either confirm or dismiss. This complexity is aggravated by the tendency of the main parties to the conflict to use public discourse as a propaganda tool rather than as truthful disclosures of national policies. Against this background and timing of the Doha attack it is plausible, if controversial, to argue that it should be regarded as another example of Israel strategy of deflection, shifting the focus away from Israel’s plan to demolish Gaza City or to divert the attention from the fate of the hostages or to show the world and prove to itself that Israel is able and willing to act without waiting for a green light from Washington.

Along these lines, some analysts now fear a second attack on Iran in coming weeks as Israel once more finds itself in a position where facing a rising tide of criticism and hostile pushback that it might once again possibly act to deflect attention from what now appears a provocative failure of the Qatar mission because the Hamas leadership somehow survived the missile attack. Whether Iran would act again so moderately in response seems doubtful, raising threats of a deadly regional war with strong escalation dangers and serious policy challenges to US foreign policy, whether as shaped by the White House or deep state.

Daniel Falcone: What is the end game for Israel? It looks like in the short-term negotiators are worth more dead than alive. Are there other motivations other than power?

Richard Falk: I think your question, with due account given to uncertainties and shifting priorities, points to the reality that Israel seems primarily concerned with establishing a one-state solution in all or most of Ottoman Palestine, administered in quasi-colonial fashion by the UK in the aftermath of World War I. As I have earlier observed, attaining this goal must be preceded by a Palestinian political surrender or better yet, the physical erasure of any significant Palestinian presence. Israel could partially reach such a goal diplomatically or even by the imposition of an extreme form of apartheid making life so unbearable for the Palestinians that many would soon leave if a refugee sanctuary was found, if for no other reason than to assure family survival, especially for children.

The post-October 7 genocide, as underscored by accelerated settlement expansion in the West Bank, should end any beliefs that Israel is at all interested in a diplomatic compromise taking the form of a two-state solution, even if the designated Palestinian negotiators (the Palestinian Authority) seem willing to settle for a ghost state, which more resolute Palestinians insist would be no better than a renewal of ‘breadcrumb diplomacy.’ On further consideration it may turn out that the fragile Netanyahu coalition was unwilling to go along with the current ceasefire diplomacy because it viewed it as a trap that would block a full realization of the Zionist Project.

Considering such priorities, Israel needed to go to the blood-soaked end of its Gaza policy if it was to achieve its primary goals relating to the victorious end of the settler colonial undertaking. Netanyahu either shared this line of thinking in whole or part or accepted it as to avoid the collapse of his fragile coalition that might still lead to his facing long delayed charges of fraud and disgrace within Israel.

Of secondary importance was to extend the orbit of lawlessness by coercively removing present or near future threats within the Middle East to Israel’s security and hegemonic partnership with the US. This line of analysis best explains Israel’s recent multiple regional aggressions against Iran, Syria, and Lebanon. These military operations have been conducted with the alleged purpose of ensuring that unstable regional actors do not in the future become adversaries, which leads to the preemptive destruction of existing military capabilities with implied threats of future military operations should conditions change. Israel, despite possessing the only arsenal of nuclear weapons in the region, remains insecure, at least if security is assessed in defensive terms. More accurately perceived, Israel’s awesome deterrent capability in its regional neighborhood is conceived of offensively as well as preemptively as to avoid the rise of any regional power that might have a political disposition to challenge Israel’s hegemony or partnership with the US in managing the geopolitics of the Middle East. Whether an extra-regional challenge focused on economic penetration and energy politics is posed by China acting alone or with Russia, or in concert with a coalition of the willing in the Global South is still an over-the-horizon nightmare for the West.

Israel’s plans are most likely to be upset, if at all, from within as the status of pariah state sinks into the political consciousness of nations, the region, and the world prompting pressures from without and a pragmatic recalculation by elites within. This kind of dynamic led to profound shifts in the recalculation of the interests (although not the values) of South African apartheid elites in the 1990s producing an enduring embedding of constitutional democracy that were not even hinted at until given tangible expression until unexpectedly acted upon by the Afrikaner leadership.

Netanyahu’s unexpected remarks implicitly acknowledging Israel’s pariah or rogue status are an indication that international disapproval is now having major negative impacts. Recently Netanyahu confessed that “[We] will have to get used to an economy with autarchic features.” As well as declaring “[We’ll] have to be both Athens and Sparta, developing the capabilities to cope on our own.” Even a month ago such statements acknowledging Israel political and economic isolation could hardly be imagined as being uttered by such a combative and self-congratulating political leader as Netanyahu.

Daniel Falcone: Often Israel and the US are discussed as core regions whereas places like Qatar or even Sudan are considered peripheral. Does this event put this misconception on display in your estimation? Nothing looks peripheral when it comes to Israel.

Richard Falk: It is a tantalizing challenge to divide the states of the world up into those that are core and those that are on the periphery. Each historical era gave rise to its own distinctive patterns. World War II produced one pattern, the Cold War another, decolonization another and now the world is on the cusp of another rearrangement of core/periphery relations. The distinction between global geopolitical actors (currently US, China, Russia) and other states is another way of mapping the new world order emerging in tandem with the Ukraine War and the Gaza Genocide.

In a narrow sense, both Israel and Qatar were playing core roles in recent decades. Israel as a regional hegemon with questionable credentials as a sovereign state, although gaining legitimacy through its technological acumen and its skills as arms supplier and battlefield innovator. Whether it will retain its core regional geopolitical role despite perpetrating a transparent genocide viewed in real time is a major uncertainty, likely greatly affected by whether anti-pariah state pressures are exerted in a sustained and effective manner to ensure cooperative relations with the Arab states, Organization of Islamic Cooperation, and the Arab League.

Although I suspect many would disagree, I believe Qatar’s core is rather stable, especially if it is assumed that the September 9 Doha attack was a one-off incident. To a surprising extent Qatar has become like Switzerland for diplomacy among adversaries, reflective of the power-shift from Europe following the collapse of French and British colonialism. This de-westernizing phenomenon has not received the commentary it deserves. This world order realignment of neutral diplomatic sites exhibits more responsiveness to historical circumstances than has the UN with obvious disappointing consequences for multilateral approaches to global problem-solving.

Daniel Falcone: Mouin Rabbani recently discussed the USS Liberty and the Israeli attack on America. Considering this alleged mishap, could we ever witness Israel attacking its allies in your view?

Richard Falk: The Israeli attack on the USS Liberty during the Six Day War on June 8, 1967, killing 34 naval crew members, injuring an additional 171, severely damaging the ship. Objective scholarly treatments have long concluded beyond a reasonable doubt that the Liberty incident was not ‘a mishap’ but rather a deliberate attempt by Israel to prevent US surveillance of its military operations that conflicted with its public assertions. [For a persuasive account see Joan Mellen, Blood in the Water: How the US and Israel Ambush to USS Liberty (Prometheus, 2018)].

It is notable that the US Government chose to accept the Israeli apology and went along with a coverup narrative, despite the damning evidence that it was a deliberate and lethal attack on an American warship. This dynamic has been persuasively analyzed in Mellon’s book and to this day the US coverup is deplored by Liberty survivors. It is a revealing taint on the willingness of the US Government to throw the wellbeing, even the lives, of members of its own armed forces under the bus of diplomatic expediency.

Where Israel’s strategic interests are involved, however extreme, lawless, and inhumane, there is little doubt that the present and many of its past leaders would not hesitate to repeat the USS Liberty disaster/tragedy if the strategic stakes were high enough. More than almost any state, Israel’s allies, including the US, are not beyond suspicion, attitudes acutely inflated by security paranoia that falsely views latent antisemitism as a universal phenomenon. I entertain the wish, however slim, that Israel is capable of internally transforming its identity in ways that confer future legitimacy and achieve a stable normalcy. For this transformative scenario to have any reasonable chance of reshaping the future presupposes mounting international pressure.

Even so, if Israel were to shed its Zionist ideology of Jewish exceptionalism, such developments would be a spectacular instance of the politics of impossibility. Its enactment would help ensure peace and justice, but it has no chance of happening unless the world finally musters the will to impose strong economic sanctions on Israel, as reinforced by civil society activism that mobilizes support for cultural and sporting boycotts, demands an armed protective force under UN auspices, and urges suspension of Israel’s participation in the UN.

The politics of impossibility walks a tightrope between wishful thinking and such unlikely transformative events as the South African abandonment of apartheid, the Soviet collapse, and China’s remarkable developmental ascendancy coupled with unprecedented rates of poverty reduction. Negative events are also possible as with the signs of an American abandonment of democracy and embrace of fascistic styles of governance.

Daniel Falcone: Has the visit to Israel and Qatar by the American Secretary of State, Marco Rubio, altered your understanding of the US engagement with recent developments, especially the attack on the Hamas leadership in Doha?

Richard Falk: The Rubio visit did underscore some vital points in addition to reassuring Israel of US continuing support and Qatar, as well as the Gulf countries, of unwavering security commitments. Rubio tried hard to show that the US was still backing Israel all the way while also promising to be a trusted protector of Arab governments should they face their own security threats. His underlying expression of this dual relationship seemed to rest on the demonization of Hamas, calling this center of Palestinian resistance “agents of barbarism” and insisting that “[As] long as they’re around there will be no peace in this region.”

As Ariel Hayon insisted in an article, “Dangerous Prophecy,” when the microphones are off, every European and Arab leader knows that Hamas’s clones pose a threat to them just as much as this terror organization poses a threat to us. [Published online, September 16, 2025, S. Daniel Abraham, Center of Middle East, News Update.] Hayon, like Rubio, is trying to overcome the divisiveness of the Arab/Islamic Emergency Summit in Doha following the attack by stressing the common supreme interests of both Israel and the Islamic world (or at least of the governing regimes) in counterterrorism, otherwise viewed as popular resistance.

In the aftermath of this Israel-Qatar attack that seemed at first to threaten the Western interests in the Middle East, is a strange combination of verbal denunciation of Israeli violation of Qatari sovereignty with a political status quo in play. On the outside, but not to be discounted, are a series of civil society campaigns and solidarity initiatives that are reacting to the cruelties and injustices of the ongoing genocide. The release at this time of the report of the UN Commission of Inquiry that confirms by evidence and analysis allegations of Israeli genocide in Gaza is another facet of the overall situation.

This interplay will be tested by the way states participate in the forthcoming General Assembly session devoted to celebrating the 80^th anniversary of the UN.

__________________________________________

Prof. Richard Falk is a member of the TRANSCEND Network, TRANSCEND Media Service Editorial Committee Member, Albert G. Milbank Professor Emeritus of International Law at Princeton University, Chair of Global Law, Faculty of Law, at Queen Mary University London, Research Associate the Orfalea Center of Global Studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara, and Fellow of the Tellus Institute. He directed the project on Global Climate Change, Human Security, and Democracy at UCSB and formerly served as director the North American group in the World Order Models Project. He also is a member of the editorial board of the magazine The Nation. Between 2008 and 2014, Falk served as UN Special Rapporteur on Human Rights in Occupied Palestine. His book, (Re)Imagining Humane Global Governance (2014), proposes a value-oriented assessment of world order and future trends. His most recent books are Power Shift (2016); Revisiting the Vietnam War (2017); On Nuclear Weapons: Denuclearization, Demilitarization and Disarmament (2019); and On Public Imagination: A Political & Ethical Imperative, ed. with Victor Faessel & Michael Curtin (2019). He is the author or coauthor of other books, including Religion and Humane Global Governance (2001), Explorations at the Edge of Time (1993), Revolutionaries and Functionaries (1988), The Promise of World Order (1988), Indefensible Weapons (with Robert Jay Lifton, 1983), A Study of Future Worlds (1975), and This Endangered Planet (1972). His memoir, Public Intellectual: The Life of a Citizen Pilgrim was published in March 2021 and received an award from Global Policy Institute at Loyala Marymount University as ‘the best book of 2021.’ He has been nominated frequently for the Nobel Peace Prize since 2009.

Go to Original – richardfalk.org

JOIN THE BDS-BOYCOTT, DIVESTMENT, SANCTIONS CAMPAIGN TO PROTEST THE ISRAELI BARBARIC GENOCIDE OF PALESTINIANS IN GAZA.

DON’T BUY PRODUCTS WHOSE BARCODE STARTS WITH 729, WHICH INDICATES THAT THEY ARE PRODUCED IN ISRAEL. DO YOUR PART! MAKE A DIFFERENCE!

7 2 9: BOYCOTT FOR HUMAN JUSTICE!

Share this article: email mastodon facebook 🔗 copy link

DISCLAIMER: The statements, views and opinions expressed in pieces republished here are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of TMS. In accordance with title 17 U.S.C. section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. TMS has no affiliation whatsoever with the originator of this article nor is TMS endorsed or sponsored by the originator. “GO TO ORIGINAL” links are provided as a convenience to our readers and allow for verification of authenticity. However, as originating pages are often updated by their originating host sites, the versions posted may not match the versions our readers view when clicking the “GO TO ORIGINAL” links. This site contains copyrighted material the use of which has not always been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. We are making such material available in our efforts to advance understanding of environmental, political, human rights, economic, democracy, scientific, and social justice issues, etc. We believe this constitutes a ‘fair use’ of any such copyrighted material as provided for in section 107 of the US Copyright Law. In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, the material on this site is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. For more information go to: http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.shtml. If you wish to use copyrighted material from this site for purposes of your own that go beyond ‘fair use’, you must obtain permission from the copyright owner.

There are no comments so far.