Mossad did oppose the Doha strike – but not for the reasons being reported

Barnea was not alone. IDF Chief of Staff Lt. General. Eyal Zamir expressed reservations. So did Maj. General Nitzan Alon, head of the intelligence centre for prisoners and hostages, who also argued that, in the midst of negotiations— even if the chances of success were slim — it was unwise to strain relations with Qatar. After all, together with Egypt, Qatar had continued its efforts to mediate between Israel and Hamas. Even within the upper ranks of the Shin Bet, there were disagreements over the timing.

The reason why the Shin Bet (its English name is Israel Security Agency – ISA) received credit for the operation stems from two points. The first is that, for years, the Shin Bet has been active in counterterrorism not only in Gaza and the West Bank, but also beyond Israel’s borders. For example, it was involved in the targeted killings of senior Hamas officials in Lebanon – among them the deputy head of Hamas’s political bureau, Saleh al-Arouri, who was responsible for terror attacks in the West Bank and was eliminated in January 2024, three months after October 7. Furthermore, Shin Bet has a special unit in charge of tracking Hamas bases and headquarters worldwide.

Nevertheless, the cooperation between all three Israeli security and intelligence agencies is excellent, with very few turf wars. They share every piece of information and are present in each operation outside Israel. What is less known is the fact that a significant part of the risky and sensitive operations for which Mossad or Shin Bet take credit are actually conducted by unit 8200 of Aman – which is in charge of signals intelligence (SIGNIT), cyber-operations and code-breaking. Thus, 8200 was an important element in the preparations and intelligence collection ahead of the strike in Qatar.

The Shin Bet was also involved in gathering intelligence against Hamas operatives and bases in Turkey, even though Israel has been so far very careful not to carry out any attacks on Turkish soil. It fears that unlike Qatar, Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, who is virulently anti-Israel, would not tolerate an Israeli assassination attempt on its soil, and would respond with military force against Israeli targets.

The second reason is that both the Shin Bet and the IDF assessed that their intelligence was accurate and that there were good chances of success in the Qatar strike. The Shin Bet – considered the main culprit for the failures around October 7 and whose morale has since sunk to rock bottom – has been striving to restore its standing. A successful operation in Qatar was a key opportunity to salvage its reputation.

However, senior Israeli sources said that the division of labour on counterterrorism between Shin Bet, Mossad and Aman (military intelligence) is sometimes blurred.

According to the sources "the decision which agency will lead in counterterrorism operations is determined according to the relative advantage that a particular organisation has with respect to the target, and the operational capability".

Mossad assassinated Hamas leader and head of its political bureau, Ismail Haniyeh, in Tehran, because Iran is considered that agency’s turf, where it holds a relative advantage and prior operational experience. By contrast, Qatar was regarded as a relatively "soft", and therefore the mission was assigned to the Shin Bet.

All Israeli security leaders including former and current defence ministers (Yoav Galant and Israel Katz), former Shin Bet head Ronen Bar and Mossad's head Barnea swore after October 7 that they would hunt down any Hamas members – junior or senior – involved in murdering, torturing, raping and kidnapping Israelis that day.

They compared the mission to the chase conducted by Mossad against Palestinian terrorists after the murder of 11 Israeli athletes in the Munich Olympics in September 1972.

For the purpose of eliminating Hamas terrorists, a special unit was established in Shin Bet, codenamed Nili. It is led by heads of the southern district and the operations department of the agency.

Nili refers to an underground Jewish pro-British espionage network in Ottoman Palestine during the First World War. Its name is an acronym drawn from the biblical verse “Netzah Yisrael Lo Yeshaker” — “The Eternity of Israel will not lie” (1 Samuel 15:29). The name evokes the movement’s mission of sacrifice, resilience and the unshakable belief in the survival of the Jewish people. The strike in Qatar should be seen in this context.

Nevertheless, in the wake of the strike in Qatar, suspicion is growing that the operation did not achieve its declared objectives. Hamas and the Qatari government are still maintaining silence regarding the results of the attack, while the Israel intelligence and the government are anxiously waiting to see it was a failure. Yet at his stage it appears that the number of senior members of the terror organisation hit in the Israeli bombing is likely lower than initially believed.

As the regional war drags on and grows more complicated, Israel, led by the embattled prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu, is taking greater risks with its assassinations. Until recently, the string of assassinations had been described as a series of mounting successes.

But about two weeks ago, the IAF struck hit Sana’a, the capital of Yemen, in an attempt to assassinate the Houthis leadership. While most of the ministers including the Houthi prime minister were killed, the Israeli strike missed the two most important Houthi leaders. And now Qatari strike is hanging in balance.

US President Donald Trump reacted to the strike with ambiguity. "He is deliberately obscuring the circumstances to preserve for himself a margin of deniability," wrote Amos Harel of Haaretz.

Most probably Trump wants to distance the US from the consequences of the strike, especially because the Israeli operation harmed Qatar and at the same time missed its primary objective: the killing of senior Hamas leaders.

The president does not like to be associated with failures, all the more so given his complicated relationship and entangled interests with the Qatar, home to the biggest American military base in the Middle East.

The Wall Street Journal reported that Trump told Netanyahu the strike had been “a foolish act”. What is already evident is the damage caused to Israeli-Qatari relations, with all their inherent complexities. Qatar’s prime minister said in an interview with CNN that “what Netanyahu has done is simply the destruction of any hope for the hostages”.