Ceasefire Negotiations as Target Practice: Zionist Deceit, Imperial Collusion, and the Assassination of Dialogue
A portrait of Israeli and US diplomacy weaponized — where ceasefire talks became cover for calculated elimination
On September 7, 2025, Israeli forces attempted to assassinate senior Hamas negotiator Khalil al-Hayya while he was in Qatar, engaged in ceasefire talks. The strike killed his son and aides. Israel’s action, timing and message were strategic and not new. They were the crystallization of a long-standing Zionist doctrine: negotiation as theater, peace as a tactical delay, and dialogue as a target.
The strike in Doha — on Qatari soil, during active mediation — exposes the machinery of deceit that has animated Israeli policy since the inception of the Zionist Jewish state. It also lays bare the complicity of the United States, whose billions in military aid and rhetorical cover enable these acts of violence under the guise of “stability.” And it reveals the symbolic impotence of Qatar, whose role as mediator now looks more like stagehand in a performance scripted by imperial power.
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I. Negotiation as a Zionist Weapon
From Camp David to Oslo, the Israeli state has mastered the art of negotiation as a tool of domination. At Camp David II in 2000, Ehud Barak’s so-called “generous offer” was a fragmented, non-sovereign patchwork of enclaves. When Arafat rejected it, the false narrative of Palestinian rejectionism was born — erasing the asymmetry of power and the deliberate sabotage of meaningful sovereignty.
The Oslo Accords were no better. Marketed as a breakthrough, they entrenched occupation through the Area A/B/C divisions and security coordination that disarmed resistance while legitimizing Israeli control. Oslo did not end the occupation — it rebranded it. It created a Palestinian Authority that policed its own people while Israel expanded settlements and deepened its grip.
The Doha strike follows this logic. It is not a deviation from peace — it is the Zionist definition of peace: Palestinian submission, Israeli impunity, and the silencing of resistance.
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II. Erasure as Strategy: From Villages to Voices
The Zionist project has always been one of erasure. In 1948, over 400 Palestinian villages were destroyed. Al-Tantura, Iqrit, and Umm el-Hiran were wiped off the map, replaced with Jewish settlements and sanitized histories. The ruins of my own father’s village of Lifta west of Jerusalem are still standing for all to witness. These atrocities were not collateral damage, they were foundational.
Today, the erasure continues — not just of land, but of voice. The assassination of Ghassan Kanafani in 1972 was a strike against narrative. The bombing of Al Jazeera’s offices in Gaza in 2021 was a strike against documentation. The Doha strike is a strike against negotiation itself — against the idea that Palestinians can speak, strategize, or survive.
This is rhetorical silencing through physical annihilation. It is the logic of settler colonialism: erase the village, erase the witness, erase the negotiator.
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III. Imperial Collusion: The U.S. and the Spectacle of Peace
The United States did not merely condone the Doha strike — it facilitated it, despite Qatar being a key ally and host of American military bases. Reports indicate that Israel gave the U.S. advance notice.
The strike on Doha is a move better described as imperial choreography than diplomacy.
The logic is familiar. In 1945, the U.S. dropped atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, claiming it would “end the war” and “save lives.” Mass death was framed as peace. Today, the same logic is used to justify the bombing of Gaza, the assassination of negotiators, and the funding of Israeli military operations. Peace, in this framework, is not the absence of violence, it is the triumph of empire.
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IV. Europe’s Performance and the Two-State Mirage
The EU’s response to the Doha strike was swift but toothless. France condemned the attack as a violation of Qatari sovereignty, and Germany issued concern over the breakdown of negotiations. But no sanctions followed. No diplomatic rupture. No pause in arms trade or intelligence sharing. Just the usual choreography of concern.
France and Saudi Arabia, meanwhile, are co-chairing the UN’s High-Level Conference on the Two-State Solution. Macron has pledged to recognize Palestinian statehood by September, and Saudi Arabia is pushing a roadmap that includes Hamas disarmament and PA governance in Gaza. But this is not a justice-centered vision. It is a strategic recalibration designed to stabilize trade routes, normalize ties with Israel, and exclude resistance from governance.
The two-state solution, as currently invoked, is a strategic fantasy. It offers fragmented sovereignty, no right of return, and no accountability for ethnic cleansing or apartheid. It is not a path to justice — it is a mechanism to preserve Israeli superiority while deflecting global outrage. France, the US, and the UK support it not because it serves Palestinians, but because it serves empire.
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V. Qatar’s Toothless Response: Sovereignty as Spectacle
Qatar condemned the strike as a violation of international law. But condemnation without consequence is complicity. Qatar hosts negotiations, funds Gaza aid, and houses U.S. bases — yet it could not prevent a strike on its own soil. This is not sovereignty, it is spectacle.
The question must be asked: Is Qatar a mediator, a proxy, or a stage? Its response reveals the limits of Gulf diplomacy, where soft power and humanitarian aid mask a deeper entanglement with imperial interests. The Doha strike exposes the hollowness of this posture. It shows that even the performance of peace can be bombed.
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Vl. Conclusion: Resistance Beyond the Script
The assassination attempt in Doha is not an aberration — it is a crystallization. It reveals the architecture of Zionist deceit, the complicity of empire, and the symbolic impotence of mediation. It demands a reframing of resistance — not as reactive, but as narratively insurgent.
Palestinians are not merely surviving — they are narrating, strategizing, and refusing erasure. The strike in Doha was meant to silence. But it has only amplified the truth: that peace, as defined by empire, is a lie. And that resistance, even under fire, continues to speak.
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Rima Najjar is a Palestinian whose father’s side of the family comes from the forcibly depopulated village of Lifta on the western outskirts of Jerusalem and whose mother’s side of the family is from Ijzim, south of Haifa. She is an activist, researcher, and retired professor of English literature, Al-Quds University, occupied West Bank.
