Fair point. Also a fair point: Hostage negotiations didn’t go anywhere when Ismail Haniyeh was still alive, either. Could that have something to do with his current room-temperature status?
Still, Qatar’s emir raises the question that immediately emerged in the wake of Haniyeh’s assassination. How will this impact the moribund negotiations to free the hostages and settle the conflict?
The prime minister of Qatar, which has acted as a mediator in ceasefire negotiations between Israel and Hamas, suggested on Wednesday that the killing of Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh could jeopardize efforts to secure a truce in Gaza.
“Political assassinations and continued targeting of civilians in Gaza while talks continue leads us to ask, how can mediation succeed when one party assassinates the negotiator on other side?” Prime Minister Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al Thani wrote on X.
“Peace needs serious partners & a global stance against the disregard for human life.”
True enough. And in that sense, perhaps Al Thani could explain why his country continues to host the billionaire leadership of a terrorist network that has consistently exhibited a “disregard for human life” throughout its existence. And not just for Israeli lives, or Jewish lives, but a complete disregard Palestinian lives, which it sacrifices by the tens of thousands for its own political and strategic ends.
Oh wait, we already know the answer to that. They’re hosting Hamas because the US asked them to do so when Barack Obama was president. That way we could negotiate indirectly with them and work on a two-state solution that holds no interest at all for Hamas, whose leadership consistently makes clear that their goal is to annihilate Israel and claim all its territory for themselves.
That already made the basis for negotiations something of a fugazi. Hamas wanted Israel to essentially disarm around Gaza and allow Hamas to re-arm, and Israel wants to ensure that Hamas can never re-arm at all. That’s been the sticking point ever since a brief interlude that freed scores of hostages in exchange for hundreds of Palestinian prisoners back in late November. Supposedly, Haniyeh had begun to offer concessions, but nothing has changed in reality ever since that first exchange. Hamas refuses to capitulate and disarm, and Israel refuses to commit national suicide.
CNN notes that Haniyeh hasn’t even engaged with negotiators for the last couple of weeks:
Haniyeh was in touch with mediators in Qatar and Egypt as recently as early July. Those talks now hang in the balance, despite some hope earlier this month that they were nearing a framework agreement.
A source with knowledge of the negotiations told CNN Wednesday that Haniyeh’s death could “complicate mediation talks.” The source said Haniyeh was “instrumental” in getting certain breakthroughs in negotiations and – along with the Hamas military leader in Gaza, Yahya Sinwar – was a “key decision maker.”
Maybe that was part of the problem, no? Haniyeh and Sinwar refused to meaningfully budge from their positions, encouraged no doubt by pressure from Joe Biden and now Kamala Harris on the Israelis to make all of the concessions necessary to get a deal, any deal. If Haniyeh had been working in good faith to find a peaceful solution, Israel wouldn’t have assassinated him and rolled the dice on getting more cooperation, Instead, Haniyeh — far from the “moderate” that some media outlets claim him to be — was a hardline Islamist jihadist fully committed to Israel’s destruction and a complete obstacle to peace and security.
Israel warned that anyone in Hamas was a “dead man walking.” And if that leaves Al Thani without a negotiator, it hardly matters when Haniyeh and Yahya Sinwar made it clear for the last several months that no reasonable deal was forthcoming. After learning that lesson the hard way, Israel has apparently decided to stop negotiating with terrorists — at least until the terrorists decide they need to actually negotiate.
