Where Israel Could Pull Off Its Next Big Assassination Plot

Israeli officials have indicated that they are preparing to conduct assassinations of Hamas leadership on foreign soil in Turkey, Qatar, and Lebanon in the coming days. But already, its warnings are threatening to set off diplomatic rows.

“I have instructed the Mossad to act against the heads of Hamas wherever they are,” Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said late last month.

Recordings revealed this week show Ronen Bar, the leader of Israel’s internal security agency, Shin Bet, stating Israel will take out Hamas leadership “in every location.”

“In Gaza, in the West Bank, in Lebanon, in Turkey, in Qatar, everyone,” he reportedly said. “The Cabinet set a goal for us, to take out Hamas. And we are determined to do it; this is our Munich,” Bar said, referring to Israel’s plots to take out Palestinian terrorists who were responsible for the 1972 Munich Olympics attack, which killed 11 Israeli athletes.

Israel has been conducting assassination attempts around the globe against Hamas and other Palestinians for years. But while in previous years its foreign intelligence agency, Mossad, has worked to keep some of its operations under wraps, the Israeli government is now broadcasting loud and clear that it will go after Hamas wherever it is in the world, not just Gaza.

The decision has raised questions about whether Israel will obtain approval from nations harboring Hamas, or whether Israel will barrel through with secret operatives to kill off Hamas leadership, regardless of the diplomatic consequences.

One of the lessons learned from the United States’ own war on terror over the past two decades is to give some semblance of pre-warning about planned attacks on foreign soil, said Andrew Borene, a former senior officer in the U.S. Office of the Director of National Intelligence and the National Counterterrorism Center—where he served as group chief of an interagency team responsible for policy and planning of counterterrorism operations in the Middle East and elsewhere.

“Knowing that a legitimate state… is exerting national security powers or kind of going after terrorists, probably puts itself in a place to have enhanced legitimacy if it has kind of pre-socialized, if you will, its intent,” Borene, now executive director at Flashpoint, told The Daily Beast, stressing that the war and the staggering loss of innocent lives has been incredibly painful to watch. “That may be one of the lessons of the last 20 years, is kind of get permission in advance. I think that that way secret operations align with totally public objectives.”

Of course, Israel’s objective to go after Hamas has already been met with some consternation.

Ankara, for its part, has warned Israel against targeting Hamas leaders inside Turkey.

“Necessary warnings were made to the interlocutors based on the news of Israeli officials’ statements, and it was expressed to Israel that [such an act] would have serious consequences,” a Turkish intelligence official told Reuters.

Tensions over the conflict have already flared between Israel and Turkey, which has provided a safe haven for Hamas since 2011. Since Oct. 7, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has clarified that Turkey does not consider Hamas a terrorist group. “Hamas is not a terrorist organization,” Erdogan said. It is “a liberation group, ‘mujahideen’ waging a battle to protect its lands and people.”

In late October, Erdogan said Turkey was prepared to label Israel a war criminal.

“Israel, we will proclaim you as a war criminal to the world,” Erdogan said.

The Israeli government has suggested it will be reassessing ties with Turkey as a result. The two nations had resumed full diplomatic relations just last year, returning ambassadors to countries after Turkey had removed its ambassador from Israel when dozens of Palestinians were killed in a protest at the border of Gaza.

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Even if Israel chooses to dismiss Istanbul’s warnings and carry out assassinations of Hamas leaders there, it may face some strong headwinds—both in Turkey and in other countries Israel has set its sights on, including Qatar and Lebanon.

Generally, undertaking actions like this—targeting killings abroad—is growing increasingly difficult in a data-driven, online world, in which carrying out cloak-and-dagger operations is getting trickier by the day, said Borene.

“Grey-zone warfare… with this explosion in data and public information and open source intelligence, attribution of those types of operations” is easier, Borene told The Daily Beast. “It is much harder to do things secretly as a nation state actor or any organization.”

Shake-up

Mossad has a deep and storied history of directing assassination plots around the globe, from dressing up agents as tourists with forged passports to assassinate a Hamas leader, to planting a bomb inside a phone to conduct a targeted killing in France, to launching a failed poisoning operation inside Jordan.

The 1997 poisoning in Jordan went awry when agents, disguised as Canadians, were caught trying to poison Hamas leader Khaled Meshaal, who fell into a coma. A diplomatic tussle ensued: Jordan threatened to tear up a peace treaty with Israel, and Israel ended up releasing Palestinian prisoners and a Hamas leader to secure the Israeli agents’ release.

The Mossad unit that conducts these kinds of assassination missions, known internally as “Caesaria,” is designed to carry out operations secretly.

In recent years, Caesaria, though, has run into some stumbling blocks. In 2022, the commander of Caesaria quit over reported differences of opinion with David Barnea, the chief of Mossad.

Barnea reportedly wanted to make organizational changes to the special unit that the commander, only known by “Bet,” could not support. Several deputies and operatives also reportedly quit along with Bet.

It’s not clear if the organizational shakeup has impacted Israel’s ability to carry out assassinations abroad.

David Kimche, the late former deputy head of the agency, has said that the operations are designed to take place in somewhat secretive ways.

“We tried not to do things just by shooting a guy in the streets, that's easy—fairly,” Kimche told The Guardian in 2010, before he passed.

Delicate Dance

Israel’s relationship with Qatar, which has been helping facilitate hostage rescues with Hamas, also hangs in the balance of the planned assassination operations.

The group’s political leader, Ismail Haniyeh, and Khaled Meshaal, a former head of Hamas, are regularly in Qatar.

It’s unlikely that Israel would target Hamas leadership around the globe while Hamas still holds captives in order to maximize their chances of returning home safely, said David Tal, a historian of Israeli security issues and diplomatic history.

“As long as Hamas is holding the captives and the hostages then Israel will not attack the leaders of Hamas. That’s a kind of insurance card,” Tal told The Daily Beast. “It would be only when the crisis in the Gaza Strip would be resolved one way or another.”

But when the war in Gaza is effectively over, Israel likely will jump at the chance to attack any Hamas leader inside Qatar, regardless of the goodwill Qatar may have built up in recent weeks helping with hostage releases.

“If Israel has a chance to assassinate one of the Hamas leaders in Qatar, I’m not sure Israel would hesitate,” said Tal, now the Yossi Harel chair in modern Israel studies at the University of Sussex.

“Qatar is one of the major supporters of Hamas. It’s close ideologically to Hamas. So I don’t think Israel will have a problem, from that perspective, in clashing with Qatar,” Tal said. “If Qatar will continue to hold leaders of Hamas after the end of the war in the Gaza Strip, I wouldn’t exclude or I wouldn’t take it out of the realm of possibility that they would also target Hamas leaders who are in Qatar.”

Qatar has taken on a central role in the complex web of governments and stakeholders working to arrange the release of hostages from Hamas, given its longstanding communications with the terrorist group. That relationship has left many political leaders around the globe uneasy. A group of U.S. lawmakers have been pressuring President Joe Biden to urge Qatar—and Turkey—to sever its relationship with the terrorist group and kick Hamas out.

Following conversations between U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken and the emir of Qatar, Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad al-Thani, Qatar informed the Biden administration in October it would reconsider its relationship with Hamas, Reuters reported.

Tinderbox

The prospect of assassinating Hamas leadership inside Lebanon, another country Israel has set its sights on to go after Hamas leadership, presents more challenges and complications.

Hamas leaders have touted that Hamas and Hezbollah, both terrorist groups Iran has financed and supported, are closely coordinating in the war. And Lebanese Hezbollah, both a militant group and a political party, has been clashing with Israeli forces at Israel’s northern border ever since Hamas attacked Israel on Oct. 7.

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The ongoing clashing raises the risk that either or both sides miscalculate and Israel’s war with Hamas expands to a northern front.

Although longtime Iran analysts have said that Iran, which backs Hezbollah and Hamas, likely does not want a broader conflict with the United States, Iranian proxies continue to launch attacks in the region. Just this week, the USS Carney responded to attacks against commercial vessels in the Red Sea—which the Pentagon has blamed on Iran-backed Houthis. The United States shot down another drone from the Houthis Wednesday.

Whether an assassination attempt in Lebanon would spark a broader blowback from Beirut or Hezbollah is up in the air, says Tal.

“The connection between Hezbollah and Hamas is much more a matter of utility rather than rather than ideological. So I don’t think that Hezbollah would start a war against Israel if Israel would assassinate a Hamas leader in Lebanon,” Tal said. “They wouldn’t pay that price—they don’t pay that fine now, even when Israel is striking very hard in the Gaza Strip and Hezbollah clashes with Israel in a limited way. They don’t attack Israel with everything they have.”

Hezbollah is likely clocking that the United States has moved firepower to the region to deter broader conflict. The USS Gerald R. Ford carrier strike group stands on guard in the Eastern Mediterranean, ready to act should clashes escalate. U.S. officials are hoping that will deter any further expansion of the conflict with Hezbollah.

“They keep all in a very low profile,” Tal said of Hezbollah.