Understanding Israel’s Attack on Qatar, and What It Means for the Region

Israel attacked the Qatari capital of Doha on Tuesday, killing six people. The target was a gathering of Hamas’ leadership who were meeting to consider the latest proposal from the United States for an end to the genocide and the release of the remaining Israeli hostages being held in Gaza.

There is a lot to unpack in this attack. While there is neither evidence nor reason to believe the U.S. was directly involved, Washington’s claim that they were taken completely by surprise by the attack seems like only part of the story in light of some of President Donald Trump’s statements.

Qatar, meanwhile, initially said it was suspending its role as mediator for talks between Israel, the U.S., and Hamas, but soon after said it would continue in that role, although its efforts are obviously hampered by the Israeli attack.

Israel targeted Hamas’ leadership, but none of the six casualties were among that group. Instead, five lower level Hamas members and one Qatari security official were the victims. The failure to kill the top Hamas leadership spurred more forceful denials of American foreknowledge from Trump. Yet those very denials, after initially saying he ordered Qatar be warned about the incoming Israeli attacks, only added to the sense that he knew about Israel’s action at least a short time in advance, possibly longer.

The latest Israeli attack expands the boundaries of Israeli recklessness and criminality. Israel has launched targeted assassination attempts like this one on several occasions in the past. But this time, they did it on the territory of a U.S. ally, one which has cultivated a particularly close relationship with the Trump administration. Moreover, while Israel has, in the past attacked Iran while they were off guard because they were working on a compromise with the U.S., this was a meeting that was specifically held in response to a U.S. proposal, which Israel used as an opportunity to launch its attack, making the U.S. at least indirectly complicit in setting up the attack.

What did the U.S. know and when did it know it?

Trump claims to be “very unhappy about every aspect of [the Israeli attack]. We’ve got to get the hostages back. But I was very unhappy about the way that went down.” That unhappiness seemed to grow considerably after it was reported that none of the six people killed were senior Hamas leaders.

Trump’s initial statement, released on his Truth Social system and later echoed verbatim by his spokesperson, Karoline Leavitt, seems to offer something of a timeline. From that statement, it seems clear that the “U.S. military,” by which we must assume he means senior defense officials, informed him of the impending attack on Doha. He had his aide, Steve Witkoff, call the Qataris, but, according to Trump, Witkoff was “unfortunately, too late to stop the attack.”

But if Trump objected to the attack, there was no need to call the Qataris. What could they do about it? Their own meager air defenses are no match for Israel’s air capabilities, and they’d be too late to activate them anyway. Qatari officials said that by the time they were “warned” by the U.S., the sounds of explosions could already be heard in Doha.

But a phone call to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu from the American president might well have stopped the attack, even if the planes were already approaching their targets. Yet that phone call didn’t happen until well after the attack was over.

Moreover, while stating that the attack did not “advance Israel or America’s goals,” Trump made a worrisome implication: that the idea of the attack was justified by the mere presence of Hamas officials. “However, eliminating Hamas, who have profited off the misery of those living in Gaza, is a worthy goal,” Trump stated in the same Truth Social post.

Trump’s problem, it would seem, is less with the idea of the attack than its failure to accomplish its goal. Trump clearly did not do the one thing he could have done to thwart the attack, but he did rush to mend fences with Qatar after the attack was completed, promising them that such a thing would not happen again and that he would direct his Secretary of State, Marco Rubio, to “…finalize the Defense Cooperation Agreement with Qatar,” an agreement whose revision has been in the works since almost the beginning of Trump’s term.

There is no reason to doubt that this was an Israeli initiative, and it seems clear, at this point, that the United States was not directly involved in the attack. But the initial American reaction suggests they wanted to see if, in fact, Israel had successfully wiped out Hamas’ top remaining leadership. While Trump would have certainly distanced himself from the attack in any case, given his relationship with Qatar, the criticism of the attack clearly grew in intensity once it became clear it had failed to accomplish its goal.

Where do the “ceasefire talks” stand now?

In his Truth Social post, Trump absurdly stated that, “I also spoke to Prime Minister Netanyahu after the attack. The Prime Minister told me that he wants to make Peace. I believe this unfortunate incident could serve as an opportunity for PEACE.”

Who knows how much of his own nonsense Trump believes, or how much of Netanyahu’s fabrications become real in Trump’s gullible mind, but there is little doubt that this attack was meant to further cripple the already stagnant hopes for an end to the genocide in Gaza and, not incidentally, any hope Israelis might have of seeing the remaining hostages freed.

This action will have the opposite effect. Now, Hamas must see any potential meeting about a proposal as a trap. This was certainly Netanyahu’s intention. But there’s even more here than that.

The deal that was under consideration was a vague and incoherent proposal that Hamas was considering only because they and the people of Gaza are desperate. The only absolute in the proposal was that all the hostages, living or dead, would be released. An indeterminate number of Palestinian prisoners would be released as well, a 60-day ceasefire would take hold with President Trump as the guarantor of the ceasefire and of good faith negotiations. That can hardly fill anyone with confidence. There would be “open flow of aid” into Gaza as well, which can mean just about anything Israel and the U.S. want it to mean.

As one Hamas official told Drop Site News, “It looks like it was written by the Israelis.”

It probably was, perhaps directly, perhaps indirectly. It is so threadbare yet adheres so closely to Israeli talking points that one can easily see either that Israel crafted it or simply that key Trump officials took what they had heard from their Israeli compatriots and crafted the proposal from it. But Hamas has to seriously consider any proposal, given the situation in Gaza, and while they were meeting under the protection of a key U.S. ally to do so, Israel attacked.

Might this have been the plan all along? The proposal itself obviously could not be accepted according to the terms in which it was written but it did bring Hamas’ leadership to one area.

So, while it’s likely that Trump knew about the attack in time to call Netanyahu and demand he cancel the attack, it is possible that the U.S. didn’t green light this operation. Yet, whether it did or not, Trump neither tried to stop it nor has he yet responded with an actual condemnation of Israel’s assault. It doesn’t seem likely that he will.

There are deeper, longer term consequences to this attack, of course. Israel has sent a message that its impunity extends even to attacks on states that have close relations with Washington. They need only say “HAMAS” and any act is acceptable, whether it is an act of war against a sovereign state or the most heinous of war crimes, genocide against a helpless civilian populace.

It’s worth remembering that, just within the last week, Israel has attacked Gaza, Yemen, the West Bank, Lebanon, Syria, Tunisia (most likely, although it has not yet been conclusively proven that the hit on the Global Sumud Flotilla was an Israeli drone), and now Qatar. Of those, only Gaza and Yemen even took a potshot at Israel, and when they did, their missiles were completely ineffectual. That’s not self-defense. It’s murderous lunacy. Whatever Trump did or did not know about this latest attack, he has extended Israel’s already unprecedented impunity to a most dangerous level.

Link : https://scheerpost.com/2025/09/13/understanding-israels-attack-on-qatar-and-what-it-means-for-the-region/