Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Saturday night defended Israel’s strike on Hamas leaders in Doha, Qatar, arguing that the terror group remains the main obstacle to ending the conflict.
“The Hamas terrorist chiefs living in Qatar don’t care about the people in Gaza. They blocked all ceasefire attempts in order to endlessly drag out the war,” said Netanyahu.
“Getting rid of them would rid the main obstacle to releasing all our hostages and ending the war,” he added.
On Wednesday, Netanyahu noted that the targets of the Sept. 9 strike were the same terrorists “who planned, launched and celebrated the horrific massacres of October 7th: the savage murder of 1,200 people, the beheading of men, the rape and murder of women, the burning of babies, the taking of over 250 hostages.”
The terrorists “perpetrated the worst attack on the Jewish people since the Holocaust,” said Netanyahu. “Now, they were meeting in the same place, exactly the same place, where they celebrated this savagery almost two years ago. At the beginning of the war, I promised that Israel would reach those who perpetrated this horror. And today, Israel and I have kept that promise.”
It is not yet clear whether the strike in Doha was successful, but Israeli officialdom has grown increasingly skeptical that the strike eliminated all of its intended targets.
