The Shin Bet security agency is reportedly probing the apparent failure of a strike on Hamas leaders in Qatar earlier this month, which did not take out any of its targets.
Israel’s strike on September 9 had targeted top Hamas officials in Doha, where they were meeting to discuss a US-sponsored proposal for a hostage release and ceasefire deal in Gaza.
Six people were killed in the strike — five lower-ranked members of the Palestinian terror group and a Qatari security officer — but all of Israel’s targets, including Hamas leader Khalil al-Hayya, appeared to have escaped relatively unscathed.
In a departure from the norm, the intelligence on the targets in the run-up to the strike was provided by the Shin Bet, Israel’s domestic security agency, rather than the Mossad, which is normally responsible for overseas operations. The Ynet news outlet reported Sunday that the IDF’s Military Intelligence Directorate played a minor role in the strike as well.
According to the report, the Shin Bet is investigating the reliability of the information it delivered regarding the location of the Hamas officials, as well as its recommendation to use precision munitions that only hit part of the building. There have been unverified reports that the terror group’s leaders were in another part of the building that was not badly hit in the strike.
The Shin Bet did not comment on the report.
Qatar has hosted Hamas’s political leadership since 2012, and has been the main mediator — along with the US and Egypt — in long-running negotiations for the release of the hostages held by terror groups in Gaza, a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas, and a postwar plan for the Strip.
These negotiations were already at an impasse prior to the Doha strike, but in the days leading up to it, the US had reportedly put forward a proposal involving the release of all hostages on the first day of a truce and then, if subsequent talks bear fruit, the end of the war in Gaza.
Hamas has said that its leaders were discussing the offer when the airstrike was carried out.
The strike elicited fury from Qatar and other Arab governments, including those with full diplomatic ties with Israel. Washington, which counts Qatar as a key ally, also expressed its displeasure.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has since acknowledged that the strike, in all likelihood, failed to kill any of its targets, but has tried to put a positive spin on it, saying in a press conference the following week that it had sent the terror leaders a message that “you can hide, you can run, but we’ll get you.”
In private, however, the premier has realized that he miscalculated by ordering the strike and underestimated the fallout that it would cause, a senior Israeli official told Axios last week.