Archive September 9, 2025

Israel had no intention of covering up its involvement in Tuesday’s attack on Doha – within minutes of the explosions being heard in the Qatari capital, Israeli officials were claiming responsibility in the media.

And not long after, the office of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu publicly took responsibility for the attack on several Hamas leaders.

“Israel initiated it, Israel conducted it, and Israel takes full responsibility,” the statement said.

The attack marks yet another escalation by Israel – the latest in a series that has included launching a war against Iran, occupying more land in Syria, killing the leadership of the Lebanese group Hezbollah, and the killing of more than 64,500 Palestinians in the Gaza Strip since its war there began.

But this attack marks a new frontier in what Israel believes it can get away with: a direct attack on a United States ally – Qatar hosts the largest US military base in the region – that has been leading negotiations to secure a ceasefire deal and release Israeli captives from Gaza.

“We’ve seen that Israel fires in crowded and residential areas and in capitals across the Middle East as it pleases,” Mairav Zonszein, the International Crisis Group’s Senior Israel Analyst, told Al Jazeera. “And it continues to do so, and will continue to do so, [if no one] takes serious action to stop it.”

The attack took many by surprise because it went beyond what Palestinian defence analyst Hamze Attar called, “traditional Mossad [Israeli intelligence] work”, such as assassinations through car bombs, poison, or gun or sniper attacks.

“I don’t think … the Qataris expected that Israel would bomb Doha,” he said.

Cinzia Bianco, a visiting fellow at the European Council on Foreign Relations, said that Israel’s previous attacks around the world meant “the Qataris knew that they were not completely off limits, but obviously no one anticipated a direct attack, and just the defiance and unhinged recklessness of it surprised, I would say, everyone”.

Israel has so far received little pushback for its actions from the US – both under current President Donald Trump and former President Joe Biden. In the first comments from the White House on the attack, a statement from Trump said that while the US had been informed of the attack, Israel had carried out the attack unilaterally. The statement added that the attack did not advance Israeli or American goals, but that hitting Hamas was a “worthy goal”.

“I don’t think, analytically speaking, that Israel would carry out any such attack without an American green light,” said Al Jazeera’s senior political analyst Marwan Bishara. “If America indeed did not give a green light, we should be hearing a condemnation coming any minute … The Trump administration needs to condemn this behaviour by its client, Israel, while [ceasefire] negotiations are going on.”

End of ceasefire negotiations?

Those ceasefire negotiations are discussing a deal that Trump has pushed for himself, but with the caveat that the US president has taken to issuing his own threats towards Hamas and Gaza should a deal not be reached.

That has implied that the Palestinian group has been the main barrier to a deal – but, in reality, Hamas has agreed to past ceasefire proposals, only to find Israel rejects deals it has previously agreed to, or changes the parameters of the negotiations.

The Trump administration previously pushed for a deal that would include the partial release of Israeli captives and a temporary pause in the fighting during which negotiations for a permanent end to the war would continue.

But Israel rejected that after initially supporting it, and the current deal being proposed calls for Hamas to release all captives, but only gets a temporary pause in the fighting in return.

Coupled with Israel’s ongoing military operation in Gaza City, where it has demanded all Palestinians leave, and its insistence that Hamas be destroyed, it looks likely that Israel plans to continue its war, whatever the outcome of the negotiations.

“I think the bottom line here is that Israel clearly is not interested in any kind of ceasefire, or negotiations for a ceasefire, [and] that the reports about Trump’s proposal of negotiating with Hamas, whatever this revised new offer was, was all a ruse and theatre,” said Zonszein.

“And of course, there’s no expectation that taking out [Hamas’s] political leadership in Doha is going to be some kind of strategic game changer in Israel’s war on Gaza,” she added.

Other analysts agreed with that perspective.

“Israel has taken its contempt for negotiations, and for international law and respect for [the] sovereignty of states to a new level of transparency,” said Daniel Levy, president of the US/Middle East Project and a former Israeli negotiator in the 1990s and early 2000s. “We should have long since been past the point where there was any doubt from any fair-minded person as to whether Israel is negotiating in good faith.”

Qatar reaction

Qatar has long had a role as a regional and international mediator, keeping good relations with both the United States and Iran, for example.

While it does not have relations with Israel, Qatar has hosted Israeli negotiators for ceasefire talks since the start of the war in October 2023, and has previously coordinated with Israel over providing aid to Gaza before the war.

“Qatar is one of the countries that is trying the hardest to calm the situation in Gaza and bring both parties out of the current war … but Israel has not recognised these efforts,” said Abdullah al-Imadi, a writer and journalist based in Doha.

But Qatar has begun to be dragged into the regional violence, with an attack from Iran on the US base at Al Udeid in June – which Iran emphasised was not directed at Qatar – and now the Israeli attack in Doha.

Al-Imadi believes that Qatar will attempt to “draw more international attention to the Israeli regime’s violations of all international laws and conventions” at the United Nations General Assembly meeting in a few days.

Qatar will seek “to mobilise international public opinion to pressure Israel to submit and respect the sovereignty of states”, said al-Imadi.

Kristian Coates Ulrichsen, a Middle East fellow at Rice University’s Baker Institute for Public Policy, said that he expected officials from Qatar and the wider Gulf Cooperation Council would be “reaching out to their US counterparts to assess reports that the administration greenlit this attack”.

“If accurate, [that] strikes at the very heart of the US-Gulf states security and defence partnership in ways that Iran’s strike on Qatar in June did not,” said Ulrichsen.

Analysts added that regional states needed to come together to push back against Israel.

“Hosting US bases and US military forces was an effective form of deterrence, [but that has] now evaporated,” Bianco said. “The GCC response may be a realisation that the US security guarantees are no longer as valuable as they have been thought to be for so long.”

“No one is actually safe, and nothing is really off the table,” Bianco said. “So of course, it has implications also for Saudi Arabia, the UAE, and so on and so forth.”

“Every state in the region should have an interest in ending this impunity because the Israeli Air Force and its bombs are coming to your neighbourhood if you don’t come together to put a stop to this,” said Levy.

Washington, DC – The administration of US President Donald Trump has said it notified Qatari officials before Israel’s attack on Hamas negotiators in Doha, a claim refuted by the Gulf country.

The statement from the White House on Tuesday came hours after the strike on a residential area in the Gulf country’s capital, Doha. Qatar has been a lead mediator in US-backed ceasefire talks aimed at ending the war in Gaza.

“The Trump administration was notified by the United States military that Israel was attacking Hamas, which very unfortunately, was located in a section of Doha, the capital of Qatar,” White House spokesperson Karoline Leavitt told reporters.

“Unilaterally bombing inside Qatar, a sovereign nation and close ally of the United States that is working very hard and bravely taking risks with us to broker peace does not advance Israel or America’s goals,” she said. “However, eliminating Hamas, who have profited off the misery of those living in Gaza, is a worthy goal.”

Leavitt added that Trump directed his special envoy, Steve Witkoff, to “inform the Qataris of the impending attack”.

However, Qatar refuted the characterisation, with a spokesperson for the Foreign Ministry saying claims that the government had been “pre-informed of the attack are completely false”.

“The call that was received from an American official came during the sound of the explosions that resulted from the Israeli attack in Doha,” Majed al-Ansari wrote in a statement on X.

Hamas said the attack killed five of its members, but its main negotiating team survived. Among the dead was a Qatari security officer, the country’s Interior Ministry said. Qatar’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs has decried the Israeli attack as “cowardly”, while condemning “any action targeting its security and sovereignty”.

The Gulf country had previously helped to broker a pause in fighting in Gaza in November 2023 and a six-week ceasefire in January 2025. Its role had been regularly praised by both the administration of former US President Joe Biden and current President Trump.

Israel struck central Doha just days after Trump issued a warning to Hamas’s negotiating team as he pushed for a new ceasefire. The US has repeatedly accused Hamas of stalling negotiations. Israel has been accused of repeatedly scuttling the talks.

“The Israelis have accepted my Terms. It is time for Hamas to accept as well,” Trump wrote on his Truth Social platform on Sunday.

“I have warned Hamas about the consequences of not accepting. This is my last warning, there will not be another one!”

Following the attack, Hamas said those targeted had been discussing Trump’s latest proposal.

The group added the strike “confirms beyond doubt that Netanyahu and his government do not want to reach any agreement and are deliberately seeking to thwart all opportunities and thwart international efforts”.

“We hold the US administration jointly responsible with the occupation for this crime, due to its ongoing support for the aggression and crimes of the occupation against our people,” the group said.

Leavitt, meanwhile, told reporters that Trump “believes this unfortunate incident could serve as an opportunity for peace”.

She said Trump spoke to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu after the strike, but did not say if he threatened any actions against the close US ally. Leavitt also said that the US president had spoken to Qatari Emir Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani.

‘Reduced to nothing’

Despite the White House statement, Khalil Jahshan, the executive director of the Arab Center Washington DC, said many countries and residents in the region will still view the Trump administration as complicit.

“When Israel is given a green light to basically wreak havoc over the region and violate international law, violate sovereignty of nations that are not even enemies, but actually very close allies of the United States, one has to wonder: Where does Israel stand, and why would Israel be allowed to do that?” he said.

Qatar, which has remained a staunch supporter of Palestinian rights, was designated a “major non-NATO ally” in 2022, a status the US Department of State describes as being a “powerful symbol” of close strategic ties and a demonstration of “deep respect for the friendship for the countries to which it is extended”.

Jahshan said the honorific, in the wake of Israel’s strike, has been “reduced to nothing”.

“If that status allows you to be exposed to attacks from a US ally with a US green light, then, to me, I would rather not have friends like this,” he said.

Qatar also houses Al Udeid airbase, the largest US military installation in the Middle East. Along with the US Air Force, the base houses the Qatar Emiri Air Force, the United Kingdom’s Royal Air Force, and a total of about 10,000 personnel.

The country has also positioned itself as a diplomatic asset to the US and other Western powers, for years hosting political offices of groups significant to their foreign policy, including Hamas and the Taliban. Qatari officials have said they agreed to host the Hamas office more than a decade ago at the behest of Washington.

Nabeel Khoury, who formerly served as the deputy chief of mission at the US Embassy in Yemen, said the location of Tuesday’s strike, in the heart of Doha and just kilometres from Al Udeid, left him stunned.

“As cynical as I am and as used as I am to Israeli excesses, I have to say I was shocked,” he said. “I think everybody should be shocked and should be woken up from whatever dream they’re in to the reality that Israel has now obviously become a totally rogue state.”

Khoury said the strike would likely chill diplomacy, further undermining US credibility in the region and giving pause to any groups or allies considering participating in US-backed negotiations.

“Honestly, I don’t see how anybody, especially in the Arab world, can continue to deal with the US,” Khoury said.

Jahshan added that Qatar’s neighbours, including the United Arab Emirates, which normalised relations with Israel in 2020, and Saudi Arabia, which has long been eyed as a crown jewel in Israeli-Arab normalisation, will feel pressure to take a strong stance.