Despite Rumors, Qatar and Turkey Remain Hamas’s Major Backers

It’s recently been rumored that Qatar, the longtime headquarters of Hamas, is planning to expel the terrorist organization’s leader Khaled Meshal. Hamas denies it; but there’s little doubt that if Meshal were to leave, he would relocate to Turkey, which already provides Hamas with a base of operations and financial support. Moreover, the expulsion of Meshal would be a purely symbolic gesture, since other important Hamas figures would remain in Qatar. Jonathan Schanzer and David A. Weinberg explain:

Last month, Qatar and Turkey inaugurated a bilateral “Supreme Strategic Committee.” This was an agreement jointly to pursue aggressive foreign policies that the two countries have embraced separately for the better part of a decade. Hamas is undeniably a significant part of that joint agenda, which means that it matters little which Hamas headquarters Meshal ultimately chooses to call his home.

Read more at National Interest

More about: Hamas, Khaled Meshal, Politics & Current Affairs, Qatar, Terrorism, Turkey

What a Strategic Victory in Gaza Can and Can’t Achieve

On Tuesday, the Israeli defense minister Yoav Gallant met in Washington with Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin. Gallant says that he told the former that only “a decisive victory will bring this war to an end.” Shay Shabtai tries to outline what exactly this would entail, arguing that the IDF can and must attain a “strategic” victory, as opposed to merely a tactical or operational one. Yet even after a such a victory Israelis can’t expect to start beating their rifles into plowshares:

Strategic victory is the removal of the enemy’s ability to pose a military threat in the operational arena for many years to come. . . . This means the Israeli military will continue to fight guerrilla and terrorist operatives in the Strip alongside extensive activity by a local civilian government with an effective police force and international and regional economic and civil backing. This should lead in the coming years to the stabilization of the Gaza Strip without Hamas control over it.

In such a scenario, it will be possible to ensure relative quiet for a decade or more. However, it will not be possible to ensure quiet beyond that, since the absence of a fundamental change in the situation on the ground is likely to lead to a long-term erosion of security quiet and the re-creation of challenges to Israel. This is what happened in the West Bank after a decade of relative quiet, and in relatively stable Iraq after the withdrawal of the United States at the end of 2011.

Read more at BESA Center

More about: Gaza War 2023, Hamas, IDF