Rewriting the Rules: Doha Strike Makes Military Force the Only Language

Israel appears to be rewriting the rules of engagement in the Gaza conflict, making military force the only permissible language. A strike on Hamas’s diplomatic team in Doha has effectively torn up the playbook of negotiation, erasing the last possibility of a peace deal. The attack on the conduits for dialogue is a clear signal that the time for talking has definitively ended.
The Doha channel, with U.S. encouragement, was the last remaining avenue for a political settlement after previous efforts had collapsed. It was a pragmatic recognition that a sustainable outcome would require more than just battlefield gains. The strike is a bold repudiation of that pragmatism, an assertion that victory can only be defined in military terms.
For Hamas, the future has been laid out in the starkest possible terms: total submission or total destruction. The possibility of negotiating an end to hostilities that preserves any form of their power has been unequivocally taken off the table. This is a strategy designed to force a collapse, but it could instead trigger a fight for survival with no holds barred.
In the wake of the strike, the diplomatic stage is empty. Qatar’s mediation has been torpedoed, leaving a vacuum that no other party can easily fill. The conflict is now on a fixed trajectory of violence, with no de-escalation mechanisms in place. The option to negotiate has been deliberately sabotaged, leaving only the imperative to fight.