00:00H. A. Hellyer, thank you for being with us. You're a senior fellow in geopolitics at the Royal United Services Institute for Defense and Security Studies. What do you make of the timing of this attack?
00:21H. A. Thank you for having me on the program. I don't think that the timing has anything to do with this attack yesterday at all. I think it has everything to do with the fact that the Israelis have made it very clear that increasingly over the past two years, they see themselves as being able to operate without fear of consequence in an environment of impunity.
00:48And you've seen that with how they've conducted this war on Gaza. You've seen it in terms of how they've occupied further territory in Lebanon and Syria. You saw it in how they struck Iran, a particularly odious regime, but nevertheless a regime that was involved in negotiations with the United States when the Israelis decided they wanted to strike.
01:12H. And now on Qatar, Qatar, a nation that has nothing to do with the conflict at all. Qatar has been hosting Hamas because the United States asked them to host Hamas.
01:25It's in full knowledge, in full knowledge, I should add, of Tel Aviv and the Israeli government. The Israeli government took advantage of that on more than one occasion.
01:34They've been negotiating via the Qataris over the past two years multiple times in negotiations that I have to say many in Israel itself think the Netanyahu government were not conducting in good faith, but they were in negotiations.
01:49And now they have struck the territory of a sovereign nation in complete violation of international law.
01:56I think that we all need to be very clear about what sort of precedent this confirms, that the Israelis will act with impunity, regionally speaking, unless some sort of consequence is shown.
02:09And the United States is the country that could show that, but hitherto has refused to do so.
02:18And I think Qatar and other regional actors that are close allies of the United States will be wondering what sort of worth security guarantees from Washington actually have if this is allowed to take place without any consequence.
02:34So what kind of reaction beyond the statements we read earlier, the condemnations, are there any concrete measures that you're expecting on the part of Qatar and on the part of Gulf states and Arab states that have signed the Abraham Accords and normalized relations with Israel?
02:52So I don't expect the Qataris to respond in kind.
02:59That would be incredibly reckless.
03:00And for all of the critiques that people can quite legitimately have of Qatar, they're not reckless in this way.
03:06When it comes to the UAE and Bahrain, these are the two countries that were part of the Abraham Accords.
03:13I think that they've been looking quite aghast over the past two years as Israel has conducted a campaign in Gaza that many not only in the region but internationally consider now to have reached the limit of genocide.
03:27The Spanish government, the Spanish government, the Irish government, the Irish government, they've said this very clearly, but also many others around the world.
03:33They've also been very concerned about the precedent that Israel is actually laying down, not simply with these strikes today on Qatar, but also earlier on over the past two years.
03:46And you saw only a few days ago, the Emiratis coming out quite publicly and warning the Israelis and warning the United States that if Israel were to annex, and I say formally annex, because already, quite frankly, the West Bank is all but annexed in all but name.
04:04But if we were to formally annex the West Bank, then the Abraham Accords would be in jeopardy, and the path of regional integration of the State of Israel would be out the window, and that instead, we would see something else.
04:19I think this is all very reckless. It's a significant and substantial escalation by the Israelis, and the international community has to respond accordingly, or be unsurprised when the Israelis escalate even further in this environment of impunity.
04:38When was the moment that mediation died? Or is it dead? You said earlier in the conversation that all it would take would be a phone call from the White House and the Israelis would be at the bargaining table.
04:54I think that's very true. But I also think that, again, if you look at how the negotiations have been conducted over the past two years, and you can see this repeated again and again in the Israeli media over the past two years, there's been constant sabotage from the Netanyahu government to make sure that these negotiations did not succeed.
05:18So I do think that negotiations right now are very difficult for anybody to take seriously at all. But I'm not sure when they were really genuine. At least in the past 18 months, it's been particularly clear that Netanyahu did not want an end to this war.
05:34Netanyahu wanted to see this war continue unless it were on terms that would allow him to declare, quote unquote, complete total victory. So now, even after Hamas, which, by the way, is a particularly odious organization, to say the least, but Hamas actually accepted the terms that the Israelis had laid down pretty much.
05:55And the Israelis just changed the goalposts and said, no, now we want to see Hamas disarm. No group is going to willingly do so unless they are ready to surrender.
06:09And Hamas has certainly not indicated that it's willing to do that. And in any case, surrender isn't negotiated like that. It's simply done. Right.
06:17So the future of negotiations, I think, is very stark. I think that the hostage families in Israel are going to be very concerned about their loved ones that are still in captivity and what this will mean to the future of those hostages, considering that Hamas on the ground is going to see the negotiations actually are meaningless.
06:41H.A. Hellyer, so many thanks for joining us from London in this special edition.
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