Israeli officials appeared on Wednesday to increasingly cast doubt on the success of the previous day’s strike in Qatar targeting the leaders of the Hamas terror group’s politburo, with a series of anonymous quotes to Hebrew-language outlets.
The Kan public broadcaster said in an unsourced report that Israel had informed the United States that the chances that the strike had been successful had decreased significantly.
“Right now there’s no indication that the terrorists were killed,” an anonymous source was quoted telling Channel 12 news. “We continue to hope they were assassinated, but optimism is fading.”
Similar sentiments were reported by Kan, which quoted an official as saying that the final results needed to be seen but that it was possible the strike had not achieved “the desired result.”
Two sources from the defense and intelligence community told Ynet that, in the outlet’s words, they were “pessimistic regarding the lethality of the strike on most of the targets, and perhaps all of them.” A battle damage assessment was ongoing, the report said.
The bold Israeli airstrike targeted a meeting of Hamas’s top leaders on Tuesday as they were said to be gathered to discuss a new US-sponsored hostage-ceasefire proposal aimed at ending the war in Gaza.
The gathering was believed to include all of the terror group’s top leadership outside Gaza, including the leader of Hamas’s Gaza units, Khalil al-Hayya; Zaher Jabarin, who leads Hamas in the West Bank; Muhammad Darwish, the head of Hamas’s Shura Council; Nizar Awadallah; and Khaled Mashaal, the head of Hamas abroad.
While Israel confirmed the strike, dubbed “Operation Summit of Fire” by the Israel Defense Forces, and awaited the outcome, Hamas insisted none of its leadership cadre had been killed.
The terror said in a statement that while its top leaders survived the strike, five lower-level members were killed, including the son of Khalil al-Hayya — Hamas’s leader for Gaza and its top negotiator — as well as three bodyguards and the head of al-Hayya’s office.
Hamas, which has sometimes only confirmed the assassination of its leaders months later, has offered no proof that al-Hayya and other senior figures had survived.
Amid rising criticism of the strike on the international stage as well as within Israel, Defense Minister Israel Katz appeared on Wednesday to rebuff censure of the decision to go after Hamas figures in US-allied Qatar, saying Israel would not allow the group to find safe haven anywhere.
While Katz did not address indications that some of the Hamas leaders were not killed in the strike, he said that anyone who took part in the October 7, 2023, massacre will “have justice served.”
“Israel’s security doctrine is clear — its long arm will act against its enemies everywhere,” he said in a statement. “There’s nowhere they can hide.”
The Kan public broadcaster reported Tuesday that IDF’s envoy for the hostage negotiations, Maj. Gen. Nitzan Alon, had opposed the strike taking place at this time, and that reservations were also heard from IDF Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Eyal Zamir and senior officials within the Mossad intelligence agency.
US President Donald Trump said Tuesday he had not been notified in advance of Israel’s strikes against Qatar and expressed dissatisfaction with the attack against an American ally, in a somewhat rare rebuke of Israel and the actions of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government.
“I’m just, I’m not thrilled about the whole situation,” Trump told reporters. “We want the hostages back, but we are not thrilled about the way that went down today.”
In another sign that Washington was perhaps taken by surprise, Qatari sources told Washington Post foreign affairs columnist David Ignatius that Israel and the US had promised them that officials from the terror group would not be targeted on Qatari soil.
According to Ignatius, Qatar sought assurances after Zamir said on August 31 that “the bulk of Hamas’s ruling leadership that remains is abroad, and we will reach them too.”
He said the pledges were given last month, indicating that the Mossad and White House did so within hours of Zamir’s comments.
Tuesday’s strike “came as a total surprise,” a Qatari official was quoted telling the columnist.
Comments describing the strike from Israeli officials noted the involvement of the military and the Shin Bet, but not the Mossad, which would normally play a key role in a sensitive operation against terror figures outside of Israel or its immediate environs.
Mossad head David Barnea has played a leading role in indirect talks with Hamas on ending the Gaza war and freeing hostages, which have been mediated by Qatar, Egypt and the US.
Meanwhile, The Wall Street Journal reported that Turkish and Egyptian interlocutors had warned Hamas’s political leadership to tighten security around their meetings in the weeks before Israel’s attack, citing interviews with officials from Israel, the US, Qatar and other Arab countries.
According to the report, 10 Israeli jets were deployed to fire long-range munitions at the house in the Qatari capital where Hamas’s political leadership had gathered for the meeting.
The jets fired the missiles from outside Qatari airspace and also did not breach the airspace of Saudi Arabia or the United Arab Emirates, the broadsheet reported.
US officials confirmed to the newspaper that Israel informed the US of the attack minutes before the launch, and did not disclose the target.
Trump said Tuesday that he had been tipped off by the US military about the Israeli strike in Doha and that he immediately directed US special envoy Steve Witkoff to inform Qatar of what was coming — “which he did, however, unfortunately, too late to stop the attack.”