Both Qatar and Egypt have played critical roles as intermediaries in the still-ongoing hostage negotiations. On Saturday, when Hamas appeared close to reneging on its commitments, President Biden personally called the Qatari monarch and his prime minister to make sure that the releases continued. While Doha’s official statements claims that its goals are “to reduce tension, prevent escalation, protect civilian lives, respect international humanitarian law, and increase the flow of humanitarian aid to Palestinians in Gaza,” they are in fact much more sinister, as Seth Mandel writes:

Qatar is involved in the negotiations because it is Hamas’s bank and crisis-PR firm on retainer. It hosts Hamas leaders and gives the terrorists hundreds of millions of dollars a year. It is the “largest foreign donor to American universities,” which you may have noticed are pushing a distinctly rancid mix of Soviet and Hamas propaganda and passing it off as an academic discipline of “decolonization” studies, all while these campuses erupt with sometimes-violent rallies in support of Hamas. Qatar is also the disseminator of a hugely popular television station devoted entirely to the wishes of dictators and thugs.

Meanwhile, Qatar hosts a large U.S. air base (and the protection that offers). Its “major non-NATO ally” designation will only increase its military ties with the U.S. It is also a nontrivial trading partner.

Yet when we need the deals to get around a pothole, the Egyptians are still the next-door neighbors who will be personally participating in any relocation and thus have skin in the game. And when the Red Cross wanted to get word about hostages, it went to Iran. The Thai government did the same. Qatar will be allowed to continue its double game so long as the White House believes its usefulness offsets the damage it does to Western interests. Whether that is still the case gets murkier by the day, and the Biden administration should tell the Qataris as much.

As we mentioned in yesterday’s newsletter, Israeli special forces carried out a daring boots-on-the-ground raid on September 8 targeting the Scientific Studies and Research Center (SSRC) in northwestern Syria. The site was used for producing and storing missiles which are then transferred to Hizballah in Lebanon. Jonathan Spyer notes that the raid was accompanied by extensive airstrikes in Syira,and followed a few days later by extensive attacks on Hizballah in Lebanon, one of which killed Mohammad Qassem al-Shaer, a senior officer in the terrorist group’s Radwan force, an elite infantry group. And yesterday, the IDF destroyed a weapons depot, an observation post, and other Hizballah positions. Spyer puts these attacks in context:

The direct purpose of the raid, of course, was the destruction of the facilities and materials targeted. But Israel also appeared to be delivering a message to the Syrian regime that it should not imagine itself to be immune should it choose to continue its involvement with the Iran-led axis’s current campaign against Israel.

Similarly, the killing of al-Shaer indicated that Israel is no longer limiting its response to Hizballah attacks to the border area. Rather, Hizballah operatives in Israel’s crosshairs are now considered fair game wherever they may be located in Lebanon.

The SSRC raid and the killing of al-Shaer are unlikely to have been one-off events. Rather, they represent the systematic broadening of the parameters of the conflict in the north. Hizballah commenced the current round of fighting on October 8, in support of Hamas in Gaza. It has vowed to stop firing only when a ceasefire is reached in the south—a prospect which currently seems distant.