DOHA: The killing of Hamas’s political leader in an attack blamed on Israel has prompted fears of a wider regional conflict and sidelined talks aimed at ending the nearly 10-month war in Gaza.
Since Hamas’s deadly October 7 attack on Israel sparked devastating retaliation in Gaza, Qatar has acted as an important interlocutor with the Palestinian militant group.
The movement’s slain political chief Ismail Haniyeh was based in the Gulf country.
With the United States and Egypt, Qatar has led months of behind-the-scenes talks which aimed at securing an additional truce, beyond a one-week pause in November when scores of Israeli and foreign hostages were released in exchange for Palestinian prisoners.
But in the hours after Haniyeh’s killing in Tehran, Qatar’s Prime Minister Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al Thani on Wednesday questioned the success of future talks.
“How can mediation succeed when one party assassinates the negotiator on the other side?” he asked.
Where do talks stand?
Before Haniyeh’s killing, Hamas had accused Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of delaying a possible Gaza ceasefire.
As Egyptian, Qatari and US mediators met with Israeli negotiators one week ago in Rome, the militants said Israel presented new conditions for a deal in a step backwards from its previous position.
United States President Joe Biden outlined in late May what he called an Israeli initiative for a truce and hostage release deal, and this became the basis for subsequent talks.
The UN Security Council endorsed that framework.
Netanyahu’s office said Hamas leadership were the ones preventing an agreement and denied Israel had made changes to the draft outline.
US news site Axios reported, citing two Israeli officials, that Saturday talks in Cairo between Israeli and Egyptian delegations had stalled, concluding without a breakthrough. Qatari negotiators were not present.
“Even before the killing of Haniyeh, in the last couple of days and weeks, the Israeli government, Netanyahu in particular, didn’t give the mediators any confidence,” said Middle East expert Andreas Krieg, a military analyst and senior lecturer in security studies at King’s College London.
“The killing of Haniyeh, the escalation in Beirut as well, does not suggest Israel is sincerely interested in a ceasefire”, he added, referring to the Israeli killing of Hezbollah’s military chief in the Lebanese capital on Tuesday.
At the same time, the killings of these and other senior militants present an opportunity for Netanyahu “to build a victory narrative and use this as an opportunity to sincerely enter into ceasefire talks,” Krieg said.
Haniyeh’s role in talks?
Haniyeh was elected political leader of Hamas in 2017 and was the Palestinian movement’s key operator on the international stage.
In the aftermath of October 7 he played a critical role in talks with mediators in Qatar, where Hamas’s political office has been based since 2012 with the blessing of the United States.
“Haniyeh was of course the chief negotiator but he couldn’t take any decisions without the agreement of everyone around him,” said Joost Hiltermann, the director of International Crisis Group’s Middle East programme.
“Haniyeh was, in a way, a bridging figure, was pragmatic, wanted to get a deal done... who seemed to be acting in good faith”, he added.
Krieg said Haniyeh was “able to unlock some of the difficulties during the mediation process and that could certainly be an asset that has been lost with him being killed”.
However, that does not mean “that his killing completely upended any sort of mediation, perhaps not in the short term, but in the medium term.”
Will Iranian retaliation affect talks?
Iran and its allies in the “axis of resistance”, Tehran-aligned armed groups in the Middle East, have vowed to respond to last week’s killings.
Hiltermann said in a worst-case scenario with significant casualties on the Israeli side then “all bets are off” on further Gaza truce talks.
“Then we’re in an escalatory cycle that is very dangerous and in the midst of which there won’t be any hostage release talks, ceasefire talks”.
Even in the case of a lesser attack, if “it’s something that Israel can bear, and has been persuaded by the United States to bear... then it still will give Netanyahu additional cause to stall”, Hiltermann said.
One possible outcome of an escalation in Lebanon, Krieg said, was pressure on Israel to make concessions as it was “not ready for that war” and would “need to free up resources and assets that are now tied down in Gaza”.
But Krieg said in “the very short term... for this month of August, I think mediation and negotiation is probably dead”.
