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According to leaked reports out of Israel, the attack on Qatar was opposed by the most senior Israel Defense Forces (IDF) intelligence and security officials and by Israel’s foreign minister. It signalled the end of ceasefire negotiations and made clear that the Netanyahu government prioritizes continuing the war at the expense of the remaining hostages and possibly thousands of Palestinians.

The attack appeared to annoy U.S. President Donald Trump and to antagonize Israel’s erstwhile friends in the gulf, including the UAE, Bahrain and the other parties to the Abraham Accords. After all, it was the U.S. that had asked the Qataris to help mediate the first place.

It also flew in the face of Israel鈥檚 longtime wish to integrate into the wider Middle East region. In fact, an agreement that included Saudi Arabia, the U.S. and Israel was in the works during the last throes of the Biden Administration and is believed to be one of the main reasons that Hamas launched its brutal attack against Israel on Oct. 7, 2023.

The attack in Qatar came shortly after the UAE had threatened to pull out of the Abraham Accords if Israel proceeded with a plan to officially annex the entire West Bank. While such threats in the past haven’t prevented the largest settlement expansion in Israel’s history, a formal government decision to effectively put to bed any possibility of a Palestinian state was too much even for the UAE to countenance.

Meanwhile, a ground invasion of Gaza City has begun that will force over a million Palestinians to the south of the Gaza Strip into an area one quarter of the size of Detroit, where a humanitarian crisis has been unfolding for over a year and where there are currently insufficient supplies of food, water, medicines and shelter. For many Gazans this will be the second, third or fourth such displacement.

The experts鈥� report mentioned above that accuses Israel of committing genocide in Gaza contributes to the tragic evolution of Israel from the underdog victor of the 1967 鈥淪ix Day War” and the 鈥淪tart Up” nation admired by entrepreneurs and universities worldwide, to its current pariah state status.

While the Israeli government has denied the report鈥檚 conclusions in the strongest of terms, describing it, for example, as a blood libel, it is by no means the first time such a conclusion has been reached. Two Israeli human rights organizations, B’Tselem and Physicians for Human Rights, and Amnesty International reached the same conclusion.

So have a number of highly respected international human rights experts, including Philippe Sands and William Schabas, both of whom lost relatives in the Holocaust. Schabas wrote the definitive text on Genocide and both he and Sands have appeared before the International Court of Justice in other cases of alleged genocide.聽

Omer Bartov, an Israeli American academic, who served in the IDF during its wars in Lebanon and Egypt, is best known for his work on the Holocaust and genocide. He sadly, by his own telling, reached the same conclusion. While the International Court of Justice is currently examining a case brought by South Africa against Israel under the Genocide Convention, the treaty obliges all parties to the Convention 鈥� 153 states including Canada are signatories 鈥� to take action to prevent genocide when they believe it is taking place.聽

In the meantime, in Israel, hundreds of thousands of Israelis have been in the streets for months protesting the Netanyahu government鈥檚 failure to prioritize the release of the hostages and to negotiate a ceasefire. They understand that the war is being prosecuted largely for political rather than military reasons.

A majority want a commission of inquiry to investigate the causes of the Oct. 7 attacks and the conduct of the war. They continue to protest the government鈥檚 efforts to weaken the judiciary, to politicize the bureaucracy and to exempt the ultra-Orthodox from serving in the IDF.

According to the polls, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his coalition would not win a majority if an election were held today. Nonetheless, the prime minister may not have to fight that election until October 2026. If the war does not end soon, far too many Palestinians could lose their lives, too few hostages will be freed and too many IDF soldiers will die needlessly between now and then.