Israel’s strike on a Qatari building housing Hamas negotiators was not a military necessity. It was a declaration. By attempting to assassinate those seeking to mediate an end to the siege of Gaza, Israel made plain that peace is intolerable because peace requires sharing. The only peace Israel desires is the entire piece of land from the river to the sea free of Arabs and Palestinians.
For years, Qatar collaborated with Benjamin Netanyahu, dutifully funnelling money to Hamas to keep Palestinian factions divided. The calculation backfired on Netanyahu on 7 October 2023. Having sown division, Netanyahu reaped chaos. With that, he no longer required Qatari mediation. Doha had outlived its usefulness. When usefulness ends, Netanyahu’s method is consistent: destroy. He does not seek peace in Gaza; he seeks its erasure. Hence, the bombing of Hamas negotiators — not to end a war but to end the possibility of negotiation, because negotiation would obstruct his true project, the ethnic cleansing of the enclave.
The sharper lesson, however, is not for Qatar. It is for Riyadh and Abu Dhabi. Their rulers have chosen the most humiliating course in international politics: collaboration with an apartheid regime while congratulating themselves as statesmen. They have deluded themselves that obeisance to Tel Aviv and Washington would purchase immunity. They paraded their compliance as wisdom. They mistake subservience for security.
Their error was compounded by their obscene pandering to Donald Trump. They rewarded his family with gaudy business deals, convinced that enriching the Trump clan would cement protection. But any amount of pandering to Trump or to the United States is never sufficient to constrain Washington’s favourite child, Israel. Trump pocketed their cash. Israel will pocket their obedience. What remains in their hands is nothing but vulnerability.
Israel is not a partner in regional stability. It is an apartheid and genocidal state that since its inception has never respected international law. It devours its neighbours when expedient and discards its collaborators once they cease to serve a purpose. The Gulf monarchs, who imagine themselves indispensable, are in truth nothing more than vassals renting their survival at Israel’s pleasure. Their loyalty is not insurance. It is a leash.
Saudi Arabia and the UAE may believe their treasuries and vanity projects can shield them from the fate of others. They may believe that silence on Gaza and complicity in Israel’s crimes will purchase peace for themselves. Israel’s bombs over Doha prove otherwise. Loyalty is no shield. Collaboration is no sanctuary. Servility is no strategy.
They have not merely mocked the Palestinians. They have green-lighted Israel’s attacks, provided logistical support, and enabled the machinery of occupation in the hope that complicity would buy them relevance. They mistake oppression for sophistication. What they have purchased is not modernity but moral bankruptcy.
Their glossy slogans of “Vision 2030” and other schemes of manufactured modernisation are fig leaves. Skyscrapers cannot disguise servility. Tourist pavilions cannot conceal repression. The true national policy of these rulers is submission.
Mohammed bin Salman and Mohammed bin Zayed should take note. History does not remember vassals as reformers. It remembers them as clients, and then as casualties.
Leave a comment