Qatar on Tuesday called for retaliation against Israel after the country hit Doha with a military strike targeting Hamas leadership. The terrorist group said its top officials survived, with the attack only killing lower-level members.
Israel made its decision to strike on Qatari soil in response to recent terrorist attacks designed to kill innocent Israeli civilians, including a Jerusalem bus stop shooting where six were killed. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called the Israeli strike on Hamas “justified.”
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“There should be retaliation from the whole region in the face of those barbaric actions that only reflects one thing: It reflects the barbarism of this person that is leading the region, unfortunately, to a point where we cannot address any situation and we cannot repair anything, and we cannot work within the frameworks of international laws,” Qatari Prime Minister Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman al-Thani said, referring to Netanyahu’s move on Tuesday afternoon to authorize unprecedented “precise” strikes on Doha, Qatar to eliminate Hamas leaders.
The statement from al-Thani undermines President Donald Trump’s hopes of ending the war in Gaza between Israel and Hamas, as Qatar had emerged as the critical third-party mediator in U.S. efforts to negotiate an end to the conflict.
Qatar has played a key role because it holds ties to both Hamas, as one of the terrorist organization’s most significant financial backers, and to the White House, since the Middle Eastern country is host to al-Udeid Air Base, the largest U.S. military facility in the Middle East.
Israeli ambassador to the United States Yechiel Leiter on Tuesday responded to Hamas’s announcement that its leadership survived the attack, saying, “If we didn’t get them this time, we’ll get them the next time.”
In response to the international backlash over the strike, he said, “Right now, we may be subject to a little bit of criticism. They’ll get over it. And Israel is being changed for the better.”
Steps toward sealing Trump’s latest ceasefire proposal appeared to make headway this week, when Israel said it was on board and Qatar reportedly pressed Hamas to accept the deal during a meeting with a negotiator from the terrorist group in Doha on Monday. But just hours later, the strike on Hamas leadership staking out in Doha, Qatar’s capital city, threatened to break mediation efforts.
“The State of Qatar is committed to act in a decisive way with anything that would target its territories and will reserve the right to retaliate and will take all the needed measures to retaliate,” al-Thani said at a news conference.
Still, the prime minister held out hope for a ceasefire, even as Qatar threatened retaliation against Israel for the Doha strike, which Hamas said killed five of its members.
“Mediation and Qatari diplomacy is part of its identity, and it will continue, and nothing will deter us from persisting in this role across the various issues around us in the region, in order to achieve the stability of the region and ultimately the stability of our peoples,” al-Thani said.
The U.S. said Israel gave the White House advance notice of its strike on Doha and that Washington tried to warn partners in Qatar that the attack was coming. Trump said Tuesday he was “not thrilled” about the strikes, with the White House suggesting that while eliminating Hamas is “a worthy goal,” the attack had set back peace talks in the region.
“We’re not thrilled about the way it went down today,” the president said.
ISRAEL TARGETS HAMAS LEADERSHIP IN ‘PRECISE’ QATAR STRIKE
Israel said the strike was “fully justified” as it targeted senior Hamas leaders who organized the October 7, 2023, attack on Israel, which murdered roughly 1,2000 civilians in a surprise attack on a music festival, triggering the Gaza war.
Trump continues to engage in talks with Netanyahu as special envoy Steve Wikoff, the lead White House negotiator in peace talks, carries on efforts to pull off a Gaza ceasefire. The president and the Israeli prime minister spoke on the phone twice for “very good” conversations after Israel carried out the Qatar strike, according to CNN.