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'A Terrible Thing': Kushner Tells the Doha Story, Israel Answers With Munich

For Donald Trump's son-in-law, the strike on Hamas in Doha failed and isolated Israel — and that isolation is what wrung out the Gaza deal. For Jerusalem, it's the reverse: the strike proved Hamas no longer enjoys immunity. Two accounts of the same success, and two playbooks for the next war.

·Source: i24NEWS

Jared Kushner chose his words, and they are harsh. "Israel did the Doha strike, which was a terrible thing," said the president's son-in-law, one of the architects of the Gaza mediation. "It was a failure as a military operation, and it led to Israel's global isolation." Then comes the essential point: according to him, the mediators seized on that isolation to push forward a deal Israeli leaders were at first reluctant to accept, before judging the outcome a positive one, for Israelis and for the Palestinians of Gaza alike.

Jerusalem's reply came fast. "Quite the opposite," Israeli officials told i24NEWS. "What led to the latest hostage deal was solely the attack in Qatar, which made clear once and for all that Israel no longer hesitates. The message was clear: Hamas has no immunity." And they invoked a precedent: the hunt for the perpetrators of the 1972 Munich Olympics massacre. "This policy continues in Gaza, as it did after Munich. There is no immunity for murderers anywhere."

What is striking in this exchange is not the disagreement. It's the agreement. Kushner and the Israeli officials are saying the same thing: the Doha strike produced the deal. They differ on the mechanism. For Kushner, the strike weakened Israel, and Israel is where the pressure was applied. For Jerusalem, the strike weakened Hamas, and Hamas is where the pressure was applied. Same cause, same effect, but two causal chains running in opposite directions.

Kushner and the Israeli officials are saying the same thing: the Doha strike produced the deal.

Kushner is no adversary of Israel, and his record on behalf of the Jewish state speaks for itself. That is precisely what makes his account uncomfortable. He describes, without apparent embarrassment, an ally who notes his partner's diplomatic weakness and converts it into leverage to make him sign what he had refused. Read from Jerusalem, that means the price of acting alone is not merely the world's disapproval: it's that your best friend gathers up that disapproval and presents it to you at the negotiating table. A friend, yes. But a friend who negotiates.

There remains the question neither Kushner nor his critics ask, and it matters more than who gets the credit. These two narratives are not about the past: they are two manuals for the future. If Kushner's version becomes the official story in Washington, the lesson for those who host terrorist chiefs is crystal clear: an Israeli strike on your soil is a windfall — it backfires on Israel. If the Israeli version prevails, the lesson is the reverse: sheltering Hamas carries a cost, and no air-conditioned lounge protects its leaders anymore.

The debate over Doha is therefore a debate over the price of hospitality offered to murderers. Israel will not choose which version the world remembers. It controls only one thing: its actions. "No immunity anywhere" is a promise, and like every promise from a government, it is judged on execution. The next time a Hamas leader believes himself safe outside Gaza, we will know which of the two stories was the true one.

#Israel#Kushner#Doha#Qatar#Hamas#Gaza#Hostages#JewishNews#Midbar

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