No immunity for butchers of civilians - ‘Green Prince’ Mosab Hassan Yousef praises Israeli strike on Hamas officials in Qatar

In an interview with The Jerusalem Post, Mosab Hassan Yousef – known as the ‘Green Prince’ and the ‘Son of Hamas’ – said Israel’s strike on Hamas leaders in Doha, Qatar’s capital, should have taken place immediately after the Oct. 7, 2023, massacre, rather than nearly two years later.

The precision strike on Hamas leadership was the first military action taken by Israel on Qatari territory.

“This should have been done almost two years ago,” Mosab Hassan Yousef, who is the son of Sheikh Hassan Yousef, co-founder of Hamas, said. 

“Qatar funded Hamas for many years, and Hamas took sanctuary in Qatar. They thought that they could not be reached, and they thought they were immune.”

Qatari outlet Al-Arabi reported that the building Israel hit served as the bureau of Hamas official, Khalil al-Hayya.

According to Arab media reports, all of Hamas’ top leaders were present in the building targeted by the Israeli airstrike. These included Khalil al-Hayya, the group’s leader in Gaza; Zaher Jabarin, who oversees Hamas operations in the West Bank; Muhammad Darwish, head of the Shura Council; and Khaled Mashaal, leader of Hamas abroad.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, addressing the issue of the strikes on Tuesday, said, “The days when terror leaders enjoyed diplomatic immunity are over.”

Yousef echoed this statement in his interview with the Post: “There is no immunity to those who kill innocent civilians, who butcher civilians and take hostages, then blackmail a nation in an attempt to bring the Jewish people and Israel as a nation on [to] its knees,” he said.

The Green Prince was frank in his assessment of Qatar’s guilt in orchestrating Oct. 7:

“Qatar is a small country, but they are very powerful. They are very influential,” he said. “But they are the ones who were funding Hamas and hosting Hamas. So basically, they take a huge part of the responsibility for what happened on October 7.”

On the other hand, Yousef speculated that Qatar might secretly welcome the strike on Hamas: “I wouldn’t be surprised if Qatar just wanted this Hamas chapter on the Qatari soil to end this way,” he said, concluding that the strike has practically ended Hamas abroad. “You can say that Hamas abroad is pretty much annihilated."

He warned, however, that the problem by no means ends there, saying that there is a far broader issue of “Palestinian rejectionists who don’t want Israel to exist.”

“After two years of this war, I don’t see that the problem is between Israel and Hamas. I think the problem is between Palestinians and Israel,” Yousef said. “We have an entire generation who are living in victimhood, self-inflicted trauma that is materializing as resistance.”

Yousef’s suggestion for a resolution of the problem is the dismantlement of the Palestinian identity.

“Palestine and Palestinianism as an identity, as a violent political movement, must be dismantled completely,” he stated. “The more you tolerate it, the more it becomes aggressive.”

He was also dismissive of any vows to create a Palestinian state by the international community as “ink on paper” that cannot “manifest in the real world.”

“In the real world, after October 7, this is a new reality. The Palestinians went too far,” he said. “On October 7, Israel declared war on Hamas... But on October 8, Palestinians declared war against Israel.”