Strike Breakers

“The real catalyst for the ceasefire, meanwhile, seemed to have come about three weeks earlier. On September 9th, Israel launched a strike on a meeting of Hamas officials in Doha. The missiles missed their targets, but left Steve Witkoff, Trump’s Middle East envoy, ‘furious,’ the Times reported. Jared Kushner, Trump’s son-in-law, whose private-equity firm had received hundreds of millions of dollars in investment from Qatar, and who had been working with Blair on a postwar plan for Gaza, was similarly ‘angry and embarrassed.’ In the end, the strike had the opposite of its intended effect. It brought together leaders of Arab and Muslim countries to an emergency meeting in Doha, during which they worked on a list of demands to be included in a deal to end the war. Netanyahu, who had carried out a string of successful strikes in Lebanon, Syria, and Iran, appeared to have overplayed his hand this time.” Ruth Margalit on the events that led the Middle East toward a flicker of hope. The New Yorker: At the Edge of Peace.