Editorial: Israel's Doha strike has destroyed American credibility

RAMALLAH: It is unclear whether, and how much, the United States knew about Israel’s airstrike against Hamas negotiators in the Qatari capital of Doha. But there can no longer be any doubt that Israel has assumed carte blanche. After decades of enjoying impunity for its violations of international law and norms, it no longer even hesitates to do whatever it wants. Aside from the individual victims, the main casualty of Israel’s escalation is US credibility.

Israel – the beneficiary of billions of dollars’ worth of annual US aid – openly celebrated the strike. Even Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu’s archrival, opposition leader Yair Lapid, publicly congratulated the “Air Force, IDF, Shin Bet, and all security forces on an exceptional operation to thwart our enemies.”

While Israel roams freely around the region, bombing other countries at will, America’s own influence has waned. Not since the invasion of Iraq has its credibility been so low. The most troubling element of the Doha strike was its target. Israel’s goal was to assassinate the negotiators who have been meeting to discuss America’s own ceasefire proposal. In doing so, it not only sabotaged the ceasefire talks but also sullied America’s word.

Sadly, there is some precedent for Israel’s strike. In Jerusalem 77 years ago, a United Nations peace mediator, the Swedish diplomat Folke Bernadotte, was murdered by Jewish extremists who were acting on the authority of Yitzhak Shamir, among others. Shamir would later become Israel’s prime minister, appointing Netanyahu as his spokesman. Even if violence against peace envoys is not new, it is always corrosive.

Meanwhile, Palestinians have watched the US repeatedly shield Israel from accountability. Successive US administrations, Joe Biden’s no less than Donald Trump’s, have covered for Israel’s bombing of hospitals and targeting of journalists and aid workers in Gaza. They have looked away as Israel violated ceasefires and laid siege to the enclave. They have even punished Palestinians by shutting their diplomatic mission in Washington and denying visas to Palestinian officials who were invited to the UN General Assembly in New York.

The now-scuttled US ceasefire proposal was biased in Israel’s favor. It called for the release of all remaining Israeli hostages on day one, in exchange for the US guaranteeing that it would press Israel to withdraw from Gaza and end the war. Clearly, Israel had something else in mind. When you kill negotiators, you destroy the only avenue that is available to bring your own people back safely.

Moreover, Israeli assassination policies have never succeeded in ending resistance. Israel has killed one Hamas leader after another, only for new – usually even more radical – figures to take their place. That is exactly what happened after the assassination of Ismail Haniyeh, the head of the Hamas Political Bureau, in 2024, in violation of the sovereignty of another UN member state, Iran.

America’s credibility in offering ceasefire proposals rested solely on the belief that it could and would follow through on whatever was agreed. But its lack of control over its ally has now been laid bare. By targeting the Hamas negotiators who were assessing the validity of US guarantees, Israel slammed the door shut on this proposal and any future dealmaking. That is arguably exactly what Netanyahu intended. Wanted internationally for war crimes, and having been indicted in Israel on charges of corruption, he has concluded that ending the war would also end his career.

Trust, once broken, is hard to restore. Qatar, home to the largest US military base in the region, has already threatened to suspend its mediation role. But if the US and its regional allies can no longer act as mediators, no one can. There is no other power with the leverage to deliver an agreement that Netanyahu opposes.

Given his own strained relationship with the truth, Trump may believe that credibility doesn’t matter. But in Middle East peacemaking, it is everything. Without it, negotiations will collapse before they have even begun. The Trump administration is now learning this the hard way, in real time. American influence is rapidly waning not just in Gaza but globally, as demonstrated by the embarrassing failure to end the war in Ukraine on “day one.”

As former US President Ronald Reagan understood, making a deal with an adversary requires one to “trust, but verify.” With Trump and Netanyahu, there can be no trust. The only path forward is through concrete action: a full, verified withdrawal of Israeli troops from Gaza in exchange for the release of Israeli hostages and Palestinian prisoners (many of whom are held indefinitely without charges). Anything less will be dismissed as empty words.

Israel and its American patron have dug themselves into a deep hole. Climbing out will take more than rhetoric. It will require verifiable action, because in this conflict, trust in America is gone.

(Daoud Kuttab, a former professor of journalism at Princeton University, is the author of State of Palestine NOW: Practical and Logical Arguments for the Best Way to Bring Peace to the Middle East.)

© Project Syndicate, 2025