If Hamas’s terror chiefs escaped yesterday’s attack, it’s reasonable to wonder if there was a weak link in the chain of communication.
“As of now, we have no confirmation of the success of the elimination regarding any [of] the senior Hamas terrorists attending the meeting in Doha,” an Israeli official told the Jerusalem Post on Wednesday. “Things don’t look good.”
The Israeli government has yet to confirm or deny Hamas’s claim that, while five of its members were killed in an attack on their Qatar-based safe house, the senior leaders Israel targeted on Tuesday survived.
If Hamas’s terror chiefs escaped, thwarting Israeli intelligence in ways Hezbollah and the Houthis could not, it’s reasonable to wonder if there was a weak link in the chain of communication.
In the wake of the strike, President Donald Trump took to social media to express his displeasure with the Israeli strike, saying that it “does not advance Israel or America’s goals.” In that post, the president said that he had advised U.S. special envoy Steve Witkoff to inform Qatar of the incoming Israeli airstrike — “which he did,” Trump added, “however, unfortunately, too late to stop the attack.”
Trump made sure to heap praise on Qatar, a government he recently said “has historically been a funder of terrorism at a very high level,” for “working very hard and bravely taking risks with us to broker peace.” He closed by noting that he had instructed his subordinates to accelerate a Defense Cooperation Agreement with Qatar. “I assured them that such a thing will not happen again on their soil,” the president professed.
We cannot know how Witkoff conveyed the information of Israel’s imminent attack to the Qataris, with whom Witkoff has had long-standing ties. Nor can we know what the Qataris did with that information. We do not even know if the news was relayed to the Qataris in time to inform Hamas, or if Hamas is lying about the extent of the damage it absorbed on Tuesday. But if the last remaining cards in Hamas’s deck survived, it would be a tactical and intelligence coup. It’s reasonable to ask a lot of questions about how Hamas was able to engineer that feat.