https://harici.com.tr/israilin-katar-saldirisinin-buyuk-ve-derin-etkileri/
Large and profound effects of Israel's Qatar attack
On September 9, Israel recklessly sent 15 fighter jets to bombard an over-intense point bombing of a residence in Qatar's capital Doha, killing six civilians. Although Israel's tactical goal was to “collectively destroy” key figures such as Khalil al-Hayya, the chief negotiator of Hamas gathered there, this cross-border military action once again constituted “a major crime against the world”, revealing that the Israeli government is constantly resorting to militarism to achieve its political goals, crossing many red lines, reflecting the complete “collapsing” of international relations and regional order; causing great damage and creating profound effects. What was even more infuriating was that Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu threatened to continue similar attacks on Qatar after the attack and follow and kill Hamas members. If this behavior of Israel is not quickly and harshly regulated and limited, peace and security in the Middle East and in the world will face a heavy test.
First of all, Israel's recklessly violating and bombing the airspace of Qatar, a sovereign state, is no different from waging an undeclared war on this country. This is to openly violate the Charter of the United Nations, the principles of international law and the norms of international relations. This shows that Israel's range of operations now covers the entire Middle East, making the strong outrage of the international community, including its allies, inevitable. In 11, 15 members of the UN Security Council issued a statement, strongly condemning Israel without naming it and supporting Qatar. The US voted in favor, albeit rarely.
Qatar is a small and moderate country, it has never been an Arab front-line country or in favor of harshness that defends the view of "destroying Israel". On the contrary, Qatar established low-level diplomatic relations with Israel very early and played a leading conciliatory role in the process of normalizing relations between the Gulf Arab countries and Israel. While it is true that Qatar sympathizes with the Muslim Brotherhood and supports Hamas, almost all of all aid funds transferred from Qatar to Gaza were handed over to Hamas with the approval of the Israeli government and through Israeli banks. In other words, Qatar has de facto contributed to Israel's strategy of “encircling but not destroying” Hamas, building two powerhouses, dividing Palestinian power. He also undertook the task of mediating and providing a platform for negotiations with Hamas in Doha at the request of the US and Israel.
Qatar's position against both sides of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is the status of a neutral country in terms of the law of war. Article 1 of the 1907 Hague Fifth Convention clearly states that the territory of a neutral country cannot be violated. Article 2, paragraph 4 of the UN Charter and the 1970 Declaration of the Principles of International Law have clearly established the "ban on using force" as the basic principle of international law. In the past, Israel has often emphasized the legal basis of its actions against Palestine as so-called "preventive self-defense measures against terrorism". However, this attitude was rejected in the consultation of the International Court of Justice on the separation wall built by Israel in Palestinian lands. The Divan, the authoritarian commentator of international law, openly rejected Israel's attempt to arbitrarily expand the right to self-defense in order to justify the use of illegal force. Therefore, this open attack by Israel violates both the basic principles of international law and the obligation of impartiality, and is not based on any legal basis.
Second, Israel once again proved that it was the main actor responsible for continuing the war in Gaza by attacking at a time when Hamas negotiators met to discuss the terms of the ceasefire, disregarding international morality, rules of war and international reputation. The saying "If two countries fight, the envoy will not be killed" is an unchanging rule of war and a diplomatic base. But Israel, with the driving force of its decision to eliminate Hamas, has physically destroyed the anti-negotiators in the capital of a friendly country with a secret attack, which is really disgraceful. Earlier, Israel's "mass extermination" operation against Hezbollah leaders in Lebanon was also carried out by following and locating the Iranian envoy, who went to convince them to accept the ceasefire.
The treasonous nature of Israel's attack can also be confirmed in terms of the law of armed conflict. Article 37 of the First Additional Protocol, adopted in 1977 for the purpose of protecting the 1949 Geneva Conventions, prohibits the fraudulent killing of the enemy. Deceit is defined as "acts committed by abusing trust to make the enemy believe that they have the right to benefit from protection under the rules of international law applicable in armed conflicts or that there is an obligation to provide this protection". The prohibition of fraud is the basic rule of armed conflict law; therefore, fraud has been considered a type of war crime in international criminal law. In this respect, Israel's attack on Hamas negotiators lacks legitimacy in terms of both the law of armed conflict and international criminal law. Considering that the International Criminal Court confirms its jurisdiction regarding the situation in Palestine and issued arrest warrants for Netanyahu and other political-military leaders, this step further reveals the Israeli leadership's condescending attitude towards the basic war order and international criminal justice. The attempt to eliminate Hamas negotiators by conducting an airstrike on Doha shows once again that Israel, as a state actor, is completely unsuccessful in terms of military ethics, honesty and adherence to international norms.
Third, Israel launched a sudden attack on the Arab ally of the United States, its largest supporter, jeopardizing the political and diplomatic image of the United States and US-Arab relations. This is also a serious betrayal of the long-term confidence and unwavering protection of the strategic ally, and once again reveals that Israel has become a “strategic burden” for the United States, playing an increasingly destructive “bad friend” role. Not only does Qatar provide the U.S. with the largest air base in the Middle East, buying a large amount of American weapons every year, holding a large amount of U.S. government bonds and investment, and in return obtaining the U.S. security guarantee. Despite this, Israel did not notify Washington of its raid plan in advance this time. However, when Israel's air raid fleet was detected by the US air defense system and requested to verify, Israel opened the card in its hand and claimed that the attack could no longer be canceled. Israel's unilateral attack and concealment led Doha to receive a warning from Washington ten minutes after the bombing.
From the Eastern Mediterranean to the Persian Gulf, it was unlikely that Israel's air fleet would be hidden from the US land, sea and air early warning systems along the way. Therefore, Israel's deliberate concealment and the US's ignorance are also the same door; however, as a result, the early warning and air defense system established by the USA to protect its oil-producing allies in the Gulf has completely failed. No matter how Washington justifies, Israel this time has completely humiliated the US government and put it in an embarrassing situation of ignoring Israel's reckless behavior, such as "being beating where it sits" and "taking the blame". This situation also fundamentally shook the "Middle East NATO"-style security cooperation mechanism built by the USA and Israel together with the Gulf Arab countries. Of course, U.S. President Trump expressed his discontent with Israel's attack on an ally, while also saying that eliminating Hamas was a “valuable goal” and that he “believed that this attack could be an opportunity to promote peace.” It seems that the US and Israel are in cooperation, and it seems quite natural that Israel will leave the US in a difficult situation.
Fourth, while Israel pursues so-called absolute security and unilateral security, it does not hesitate to damage the national and citizen security of other sovereign and even friendly countries, exhibits the characteristics of regional hegemony, military adventure and even state terrorism from top to bottom. This situation will further increase the unrest and instability in the Middle East, promoting anti-Israelism, anti-Semitism, extremism, ideologies of violence and terrorism. If a United Nations member state can disregard all rules and prohibitions and constantly set bad precedents, not only will the sovereign states in the region act equally recklessly on the grounds of their own security, but non-state actors will also find more excuses and justifications for acting arbitrary. Radical, violent and even terrorist organizations in a weak position in terms of power will be more prone to carrying out “asymmetric” attacks against states due to power imbalance, lack of binding rules and lack of morality, and may even attack soft targets, including clearly innocent civilians. As a result, chaos, violence will reign and the law of jungle will replace civil norms and rules of conduct throughout the world.
Fifth, Israel attempted to directly “target eliminate” Hamas negotiators without going through official legal processes, without an open, fair and transparent trial. This severely violates humanitarian principles, the spirit of the rule of law and the values of civilization, and constitutes a serious deviation from modern civilization and the international legal order. As a resistance organization operating in an occupied territories, Hamas is at war with Israel, and Israel has the right to physically eliminate its members in war conditions. However, in the case of non-war people that Israel pursues—especially Hamas members living in other countries, with civil identity and civilian status—as a state that claims to be committed to modern democracy, law and human rights, Israel has tended to kill by an extreme method such as “state lynching” and has granted the other party no right to objection or defense. Thus, Israel has lost the spirit of the rule of law and turned into a violent actor that is not controlled by legal limits, and has ceased like a sovereign state.
In fact, since its founding, Israel has always put its own security interests above international law, never taking into account or respecting the jurisdiction of other sovereign states or the basic human rights of the people sought after. The incident that made the Israeli intelligence agency famous—kidnapping the “Doctor of Death” Eichmann from South America, bringing him to his country, tried and executed him—although provided justice for the victims of the “Holocaust”, but the kidnapping itself damaged the sovereignty and jurisdiction of the country concerned. After the “Munich disaster” in 1972, Israeli intelligence followed and killed the “Black September” terrorists worldwide for nearly 10 years, all others except one woman who was injured and imprisoned in the incident resulted in violent deaths. Respecting the sovereignty of other countries and the fundamental rights of criminal suspects, Israel's so-called “legendary” foreign revenge murders are also a series of uncommendable, but “extrajudicial executions” acts and once led to diplomatic crises. Examples of Israel's out-of-country pursuit and assassination of Hamas members are also few, and various: in 1994, two agents were sent to kill Hamas representative Khalid Mashal in Jordanian's capital Amman; the assassins were spot and caught alive, which led to a nearly cutting off relations between Jordan and Israel; in 2020, Israel sent 26 agents carrying fake passports of more than ten Western countries to Dubai, killing Hamas' weapons supply manager Mahmoud al-Mabhuh, triggering violent protests from many countries... By the present, Israel has become even more unbridled and fearless, clearly sending its war machine to take lives in the capitals of other countries; these unlawed and barbaric habits are at the peak reached the point.
The sixth, Israel's airstrike on Doha has shocked those who eagerly mediated conflicts and disagreements in the Middle East, necessarily weakened the international community's mediation efforts, damaged the reputation of the relevant countries on security guarantees, and made it difficult for the parties to find a third-party platform where they could establish a safe dialogue in the future. Qatar, as it is known, is known as a “great mediator” despite being a small Gulf country; Doha witnessed an ant-cesefire withdrawal agreement between the US and the Afghan Taliban, and was the only channel in communication with Israel after Hamas lost other overseas refuges. Today, Hamas's negotiating team members have faced Israel's pursuit of all taboos, and Doha has suffered a bloody disaster as it facilitates negotiations; the deterrent effect of this bad result will be enough for other Middle Eastern countries such as Jordan, Oman, Egypt and even Turkey, willing to assume the role of “conciliator” from now on to think twice before providing a channel of dialogue for Israel. This move to “tornish the bridge before crossing the bridge” not only blocks its own “Doha channel” in negotiations with Hamas, but also closes one of the options for dialogue with the Houthis in the future, and even makes Israel's possible future peace talks with Lebanon and Syria in need of security guarantees provided by stronger and more reliable major states.
Seventh, Israel launched a sudden attack on the long-secured and peaceful Gulf countries; after carrying the fire of the "Sixth Middle East War" to the Persian Gulf with a sudden blow to Iran, it also plugged the Gulf oil countries, which had not experienced a war since 1991 and were called the "oasis of peace and prosperity", into trouble; this led to the skyrocket of oil prices, the jeoparderment of world energy supply and global economic development. If Israel's brutal military rape of Qatar is tolered, which country will be the next country to experience Israel's undeclared war? The Gulf Arab countries, which are generally "small and sparsely populated", will undoubtedly say goodbye to their peace of mind and everyone will live in uneasiness, which can lead this capital-rich "dome of peace" with lively investment and maritime transport activities into panic and turmoil; it can lead to major changes in global capital flows, causing large-scale financial fluctuations.
Eighth, the Gulf Arab countries, including Qatar, are the “pioneers of the period” that normalized relations with Israel after the Cold War, although they have long supported Palestine's cause of independence in public, morality and financial terms; they generally maintain close economic, commercial, investment, technological and even security collaborations with open and semi-open high-level contacts with Israel. In recent years, Bahrain and the UAE have been the first countries to sign the "Ibrahim Agreements" to establish normal relations with Israel, leaving aside the historical burden of the Palestinian-Israel conflict despite the great public pressure, and have dragged Sudan and Morocco, two Arab countries in Africa. If Saudi Arabia, which supports the leadership of Bahrain and the UAE, reshapes its trilateral relations with the United States and Israel, the relations of the six Gulf countries with Israel will be completely normalized. However, Israel's attack and bombing of Qatar, a member of the Gulf Cooperation Council, violated the collective security interests of this regional organization, left the collective defense mechanism on paper, collectively denocated the national and ethnic dignity of six countries, and ultimately eroded the public opinion base, leading to a hesitation or regression in the peace process with Israel.
Ninth, Israel's harsh intervention in Qatar has revealed the arbitrariness of the understanding of “Great Israelism” and the national strategic orientation and behavioral characteristics based on the strong with the arrogance of the “elite of God”, based on oppressing the weak and placing the burden on the neighbor, which will further worsen the regional and international image of Israel and even the Jews, and even revivival the agoning Arab nationalism, leading to a large-scale re-strining of ethnic, religious and geopolitical relations in the Middle East, and causing Israel to lose more Western allies. Israel's long-standing policies of iron punching, burning and starving the Gaza Strip have already attracted everyone's anger and widespread condemnation; and now its imposition of war on the Gulf Arab countries and their peoples has made Israel an overly selfish image of "I betray the world, as long as the world does not betray me." This trend not only imposes a heavy moral and public burden on the governments of the Arab countries that have agreed with Israel; it also forces Western allies to take countermeasures such as an arms embargo against Israel, trade restrictions or preparing to recognize the Palestinian state. In the 11th, the European Parliament passed a resolution and called on the 27th member states of the EU to "think about recognizing Palestine for the realization of a two-state solution". Israel's successive injustices have isolated it from the international community and dragged it into the diplomatic abysm on the way to becoming an "international orphan" and "international pariah".
“Unless Qingfu dies, Lu's troubles will not end.” The main reason why Israel's long-term and stable national security cannot be realized is its refusal to restore Arab territory, including Palestine (only in the Gaza Strip, the West Bank and East Jerusalem), its unrestricted protection by the United States and its own powerful army and pro-war state policy, and the ear-right's ever-growing, insatiable and zero-totalist idea. Israel, whose main ethnic element is more than 6 million Jews, may be unrivaled in the Middle East today, it can enter and exit the airspace and territories of neighboring countries as it wishes; but how long can this national security based on the military machine, these international relations built with a fist and this peace and stability built on countless innocent lives make Israel happy? How much can it benefit? The answer is undoubtedly clear: this is climbing a tree and trying to fish, turning south while trying to go north. Some observers have even sharply stated that Israel is actually waging a "war to destroy the country" under the name of "war of defense of the country". From a broader and long-term perspective, if the international community tolerate Israel's evils continue, not only will wars in the Middle East come one after another, but global governance and international order will become increasingly difficult to manage, just like bad money spend money.
Prof. Ma Is The Dean Of The Institute Of Mediterranean Studies (ISMR) Of Zhejiang International Studies University (Hangzhou). It focuses on international politics, especially Islam and Middle East politics. He worked as a senior Xinhua correspondent in Kuwait, Palestine and Iraq for many years.