The Three Musketeers and the Yellow Line That Haunts Them

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They march together like musketeers, sworn to loyalty to a cruel cause and the demise of a lonely Jewish state. Yet a single yellow line — painted across the landscape of politics and memory — haunts their every step. It is not just a line on the ground, but a boundary between the past and the future, between history and its reckoning.

While the grand debates over the next stages of the US 20‑point plan continue to swirl inside a thick cloud of ambiguity, the last Doha Forum has offered something far more revealing: glimpses into the intrigues of the geopolitical chessboard. From Turkey, Qatar, and Egypt—the self‑appointed mediators—to the increasingly blunt declarations of Israeli officials, the outlines of the real struggle are becoming visible.

For the three Musketeers striving to vindicate Hamas, the objective is almost painfully transparent: retroactively justify Hamas’s decision to massacre Israelis and invade their land on October 7. The goal is to make that catastrophic choice appear “worth it”—worth the total demolition of Gaza, worth the death of thousands of Gazans, worth the near‑annihilation of Hamas’s battalions. And how does one manufacture such a vindication? By insisting, with Saudi Arabia’s help, on the creation of a Palestinian state so that Hamas can claim that its “sacrifice” yielded a historic result for Palestinians and the Arab world.

Never mind that Hamas rejected this solution for decades. Never mind that it was never the movement’s goal before October 7. In this new narrative, Saudi Arabia—long considered an adversary by the Qatar‑Turkey‑Muslim Brotherhood axis—suddenly becomes indispensable. Hence the recent wave of hostile Saudi statements toward Israel, a diplomatic performance designed to pressure Washington and signal alignment with the Musketeers’ storyline.

Meanwhile, Hamas itself is cornered. With little room left to maneuver, its patrons in Ankara and Doha have floated a creative proposal: mothball Hamas’s arsenal for a couple of years. A clever attempt to lure the US administration into a long‑term arrangement that would give Hamas time to rebuild, rearm, and restart the cycle of violence when conditions are favorable. As Gideon Sa’ar aptly put it, this is nothing but “diluting the principle of disarmament.”

Egypt, for its part, is worried about something else entirely. Cairo fears that Israel—now operating with American backing and the encouragement of figures like Witkoff and Kushner—is quietly charting a new future for Gazans on the eastern side of the Yellow Line. If construction begins and succeeds, eastern Gaza could evolve into a thriving, de‑radicalized enclave. Gazans from the west would naturally gravitate toward it, leaving Hamas ruling an emptying territory, stripped of relevance, population, and eventually even humanitarian aid.

Israel, fully aware of this potential trajectory, has begun emphasizing the Yellow Line as a “new border.” When Chief of Staff Eyal Zamir says it, it is not a bluff. It signals a strategic direction diametrically opposed to that of the three Musketeers.

Contrast this with Turkey’s top diplomat, who declared at the same Doha Forum that the ISF’s real goal should be to separate Palestinians from Israelis at Gaza’s external borders—not along the Yellow Line—and that disarming Hamas should not even be discussed before such separation is achieved. In other words: install a UNIFIL‑style peacekeeping force that would function as a protective buffer for Hamas’s last battalions, shielding them from any future confrontation with the IDF. Exactly the scenario Khaled Meshaal hinted at in his latest Al Jazeera interview.

The Doha Forum did not resolve the future of Gaza. But it did something more valuable: it exposed the competing endgames. On one side, a coalition working tirelessly to rehabilitate Hamas’s narrative and preserve its long‑term viability. On the other, an Israeli strategy that seeks to render Hamas irrelevant not through negotiation, but through the slow, structural reconfiguration of Gaza itself.

Hamas, for its part, seeks to keep ruling Gaza even if reduced to half of it. It may be willing to relinquish its heavy weapons for now, but only while retaining the guns indispensable for controlling the population — setting aside the rockets and missiles once used to torment Israel. Turkey and Qatar, determined to keep Hamas alive so that the cause itself survives, continue to shield it diplomatically — hoping that the U.S. would pressure Israel to withdraw if Hamas gave up its heavy weapons and allowed for the destruction of its tunnels. For Israel, which insists on total disarmament, time is an ally: as it consolidates its presence in the half of Gaza it controls, it may succeed in establishing a status quo reminiscent of the reality it created in the West Bank.

The chessboard is set. The pieces are moving. And the Yellow Line—dismissed by some as a temporary military boundary—may yet prove to be the most consequential line drawn in the Middle East since 1967.