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.

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.