Last week, the Israeli Air Force struck a guest house in Qatar. At the time, both Qatar-based and Turkey-based Hamas leadership were meeting to discuss their response to the latest ceasefire proposal and Israeli demands that Hamas release hostages it seized on Oct. 7, 2023, ironically during a ceasefire.
Both Qatar and Turkey responded with outrage. Qatari Prime Minister Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman al Thani demanded retaliation “from the whole region” against Israel. Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan, meanwhile, likened Israel to a terrorist state and declared, without a sense of irony given Turkey’s occupation of portions of Cyprus, Syria, and Iraq, that “Israel is being governed with an expansionist mindset and is trying to maintain its stability by exporting instability.”
