Israeli Intelligence Failure – Or a Deep-Rooted Conspiracy? (Part -2) By ‘Sardar’ Sanjay Matkar-FINS

  Author is an audacious adventurer, an avid student of history and global politics. He has authored ‘Showdown at Dabiq – Islamic State Vs. Armies of Rome in the 21st century’. 4 seek to maintain good relationships with Qatar in order to benefit from its huge energy reserves, to sell Defense equipment to it, and to attract Qatari investment into key infrastructure and energy projects. Bharat [India] and its ruling politicians are no exception. They allowed an investment of one billion US dollars by the Qatar Investment Authority into Mukesh Ambani’s Reliance Retail Ventures. Beyond this, Qatar has made investments into media houses, real estate, infrastructure, financial institutions and investment funds. So, when thousands of Indian origin construction workers are killed in Qatar under inhuman working conditions or very soon, eight retired officers of our navy are hanged at the whim of Qatar’s ruling family, do not be shocked. According to our Government and our bureaucracy, sacrificing a few Indian lives and our honour and price for the billions in investments; is just the price of doing business with Qatar. Qatar’s ruling family, the al-Thani’s have perfected the art of being on all sides of a conflict and supporting everyone against each other. While funding the Hamas and allowing its leaders to enjoy residency in Qatar, it has positioned itself to be a key negotiator for the release of Israeli hostages, and at the same time preserved its close security and economic ties with the USA. Qatar hosts the forward HQs of the U.S. military’s Central Command at the al-Udeid Air base in Doha. This gives Qatar the safety shield that it needs from any military attacks from its neighbours while being publicly praised by USA as its major non-NATO ally, critically important to U.S. foreign policy in the region. This support from USA comes at a cost of tens of millions of dollars that Qatar spends though its lobbyists in Washington DC, and influences the U.S. lawmakers through investments in law-makers constituencies, contributing to their election fund-raising, sponsored visits to Qatar (Minnesota Congress woman Ilhan Omar’s visit to the soccer World cup was fully funded by Qatar) and has been accused of bribing this same Congress woman in exchange for sensitive intelligence information and to influence U.S. policy in its favour. When caught in illegal acts, Qatar falls back on their policy of threating to restrict energy supplies to countries that accuse it of corrupt and unethical practices. The attack on Israel by Hamas has to be considered as a geo-political strategy by Iran and Qatar, working to destabilize the Middle East peace process for their own gains. The current conflict has successfully stalled and maybe destroyed the Israel–Saudi Arabi Normalization Agreement, allowed Iran to gain prominence in the region’s politics, while putting those Arab states that have signed peace agreements with Israel into a difficult position whereby while trying to honour these agreements, they have to deal with the unrest on the ground by their Muslim citizens who are majorly anti-Israel. This works in the favour of Qatar who is opposed to the global influence of the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia, who have accused Qatar of various crimes in the past. The Hamas offensive has encouraged smaller terrorist groups to attack U.S forces in the region, with rocket attacks on American military installations in Iraq and Syria. If the current Hamas–Israel expands to become a U.S–Iran conflict, even through the use of proxies, it will affect global economy. Europe which is already under economic recessions due to the Ukraine–Russia war, will be adversely impacted as energy supplies from the Gulf would become scarce. The U.S. economy might also tip into severe recession and higher inflation, leading to a domino effect on other economies of the world that are tied to the U.S. economy. Scarcity of energy resources will mean higher logistics costs, increased production costs and reduced consumer spending. The first question to be asked is this. At what point will USA, UK and the EU decide to abandon their support to Qatar to stop its funding of terrorists across the world, and try to normalize ties with Iran? Unless the influence of Qatar is removed from the geo-political equation, peace or even a restless peace will not materialize. Therefore, the unspoken question has to be asked. Did Israel and its allies have complete knowledge of the impending Hamas attack on Israel, but decided to let it happen anyway for a greater geo-political strategy? The other line of thought is that, prior to this Hamas terrorist attack 5 of 7th October, the politics of Israel was deeply divided. Their current Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was on trial for corruption and was being tried in their Court of Law for fraud, breach of trust, and accepting bribes. Three of his former close confidants have turned State’s evidence and are testifying against him. The current war is a welcome diversion from political problems, even if it has caused the killings of thousands on both sides. So, the moot question arises. Did some interested parties in Israel manipulate intelligence information for party political gains, not realizing that what they might have expected to be nothing more than ‘containable violence’, actually turned out to be a full-scale invasion? While many will assume these questions to be in the area of an ‘unbelievable conspiracy’, the relationships of the past between the various players in the middle east, the current relationships between Islamic nations and their fundamentalists, the issues faced by Israeli politicians in their own country, and their singular relationships with the USA; all of these will determine the outcome of the present Hamas–Israel conflict