When Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu ordered this week’s attempted assassination of Hamas leaders in Qatar, he took a major gamble in his campaign to pound the group into submission. Netanyahu had hoped to kill Hamas' senior exiled leaders to get closer toward his vision of “total victory” against the militant group that attacked Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, and pressure it into surrendering after nearly two years of war in the Gaza Strip. Instead, Hamas claims its leaders survived, and Netanyahu's global standing, already badly damaged by the scenes of destruction and humanitarian disaster in Gaza, took another hit.