The Qatari regime has blamed Israel and the government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for ceasefire violations in Gaza, rather than the Hamas terrorists who killed Israeli soldiers on Sunday.
The Times of Israel reported:
Qatar’s emir Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani condemns “Israeli violations of the ceasefire” in a speech opening a session of the Shura Council legislative body.
“We reiterate our condemnation of all Israeli violations and practices in Palestine, particularly the transformation of the Gaza Strip into an area unfit for human life [and] the continued violation of the ceasefire,” he says.
…
The speech makes no mention of Hamas actions breaching the ceasefire, including its deadly attack on Sunday in which two IDF soldiers were killed. Israel has also said the terror group is in breach of the first stage of the agreement by not returning the all bodies of hostages from Gaza.
According to a briefing Monday by Israeli government spokeswoman Shosh Bedrosian, the attack occurred at 2:30 p.m. on Sunday, when terrorists fired a rocket-propelled grenade at a bulldozer crew in southern Gaza, killing two Israeli soldiers. The terrorists also reportedly fired rifles. She rejected as “Hamas lies” a claim by anti-Israel critics on social media that the bulldozer had inadvertently detonated unexploded ordnance.
Israel responded with airstrikes on Hamas positions that, Bedrosian said, destroyed some five kilometers of Hamas tunnels in the area. She said that Israel then returned to a “renewed enforcement of the ceasefire.”
The New York Times took the Qatari view, citing “several Trump officials, speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss private conversations,” who allegedly “said there is concern within the administration that Mr. Netanyahu may vacate the deal.” The ceasefire is immensely popular in Israel and has boosted Netanyahu’s popularity in polls to near all-time highs, raising doubts that he would do anything to end it.
Qatar plays a double game in the Middle East, hosting Hamas terrorists and funding radicals and pro-terror coverage on the Al Jazeera network, while also reaching out to the West and the United States in particular. It played a crucial mediating role between Israel and Hamas in the hostage negotiations that followed Hamas’s terror attack of October 7, 2023. Israel launched an airstrike on a Hamas hideout in Qatar earlier this year, which may have forced the Qataris to push Hamas to compromise — in return for U.S. security guarantees.
On Tuesday, Vice President JD Vance is expected to arrive in Israel for a visit to assess conditions. He is expected to meet with Netanyahu later in the week. Vance generally opposes foreign intervention but backs Israel, and has defended American interest in a close alliance with a Jewish state, partly for religious reasons.
Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News and the host of Breitbart News Sunday on Sirius XM Patriot on Sunday evenings from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. ET (4 p.m. to 7 p.m. PT). He is the author of the recent e-book, “The Zionist Conspiracy (and how to join it),” now available on Audible. He is also the author of the e-book, Neither Free nor Fair: The 2020 U.S. Presidential Election. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.
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