Peter Beaumont
The Guardian / September 9, 2025
Israeli officials say US notified before attack, which Doha calls cowardly and a flagrant violation of international law.
Israel has launched a strike on senior Hamas officials meeting in Qatar’s capital, Doha, reportedly including the group’s chief ceasefire negotiator, in a dramatic escalation of Israeli attacks across the Middle East that has drawn international condemnation.
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The Israeli strike came hours after its military warned all of Gaza City’s residents to evacuate before its planned offensive to take control of what it portrays as Hamas’s last remaining stronghold, where hundreds of thousands of people are living under famine conditions.
White House officials later confirmed that the US had been informed in advance of the attack, which took place on the soil of an important regional US ally and a key mediator in attempts to reach a ceasefire in Gaza.
The Hamas officials targeted in the strike, including key members of its negotiating team, survived the strike, according to Hamas political bureau member Suhail al-Hindi, who spoke to Al-Jazeera.
Qatar condemned the attack as a “blatant violation of international law, language echoed by António Guterres the UN secretary general.
Guterres told a media briefing: “We are just learning about the Israeli attacks in Qatar, a country that has been playing a very positive role to achieve a ceasefire and release of all hostages. I condemn this flagrant violation of the sovereignty and territorial integrity of Qatar.”
As Turkey accused Israel of adopting “terrorism as state policy”, Ahmed Aboul Gheit, the Arab League secretary general, accused Israel of violating Qatar’s sovereignty, saying it “does not care about the consequences of its shameful actions”.
Despite an outpouring of international criticism for what many countries said was a flagrant breach of international law, UK sources confirmed that the British prime minister, Keir Starmer, will meet with the Israeli head of state, Isaac Herzog, in London on Wednesday, despite opposition to Herzog’s controversial visit.
Starmer on Wednesday said he condemned “Israel’s strikes on Doha, which violate Qatar’s sovereignty and risk further escalation across the region. The priority must be an immediate ceasefire, the release of hostages, and a huge surge in aid into Gaza.”
Israel said it had launched the attack on Doha in response to a Hamas-claimed shooting in Jerusalem on Monday that killed six Israelis. Gaza health officials say Israel has killed more than 65,000 Palestinians in the coastal territory.
Reuters said Hamas sources had told them the delegation negotiating on a ceasefire had been targeted but had survived the attack while Israeli defence sources said they had not ascertained whether those targeted had been killed.
The attack follows a post on Trump’s Truth Social account two days ago in which he had warned Hamas it had received its final “warning”.
Along with the US and Egypt, Qatar has led several attempts to end the Israel-Hamas war, which was sparked by the Palestinian militants’ unprecedented attack on 7 October 2023.
Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, insisted that the attack was Israel’s responsibility alone.
With Qatar regarded as an important US ally and hosting the huge Al Udeid airbase used by the US air force, Netanyahu’s office said: “Today’s action against the top terrorist chieftains of Hamas was a wholly independent Israeli operation. Israel initiated it, Israel conducted it, and Israel takes full responsibility.”
During the Israeli-US attacks on Iran’s nuclear program earlier this year, in which Al-Udeid base was attacked by Tehran in retaliation, the US provided critical real-time intelligence to Qatar’s armed forces, apparently absent for the Israeli strikes.
Video footage from Doha, shared on social media and local television channels, showed the aftermath of a huge blast centred on a residential area with smoke towering above the city and residents running for safety.
Hamas claimed the US proposal they were sitting down to consider was a “deception aimed at bringing Hamas members to a meeting in order to attack them”.
Witnesses described several blasts in the Katara district of Doha, an area popular with tourists. Al-Jazeera reported that Hamas sources had told it the blasts struck a meeting of a delegation involved in the talks.
The Israeli attack came as Hamas was considering a new US-drafted proposal to end the one-sided conflict in Gaza, and as the Israel Defense Forces ordered the forced displacement of all of Gaza City amid a rapidly expanding campaign intended to occupy the city.
Israeli officials said Washington had been notified before the attack, which Qatar described as “cowardly” and a “flagrant violation to all international law”.
Confirming they were behind the attack, the IDF and Shin Bet put out a joint statement. “The IDF and ISA conducted a precise strike targeting the senior leadership of the Hamas terrorist organisation.
“For years, these members of the Hamas leadership have led the terrorist organisation’s operations, are directly responsible for the brutal October 7 massacre and have been orchestrating and managing the war against the state of Israel.
“Prior to the strike, measures were taken in order to mitigate harm to civilians, including the use of precise munitions and additional intelligence.”
The timing of the attack is likely to draw scrutiny, coming as Israel ordered the forcible displacement of the residents of Gaza City and just as Hamas was considering a new US drafted proposal to end the fighting in Gaza, an initiative the Doha strike seemed determined to sabotage.
Tuesday’s strike come less than two weeks after the IDF chief, Lt Gen Eyal Zamir, vowed to target the group’s leaders based abroad.
“Most of Hamas’s leadership is abroad, and we will reach them as well,” he said on 31 August.
“May all your enemies perish, Israel,” the country’s culture minister, Miki Zohar, posted on X.
Hamas had said on Sunday that it was ready to “immediately sit at the negotiating table” after what it described as “some ideas from the American side aimed at reaching a ceasefire agreement”.
Commenting on the claims that Israel had sought a green light from the Trump administration for the attack, Trita Parsi of the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft said: “What is the value of an American security umbrella [for Qatar] and hosting a US base on your soil if the United States itself conspires to attack you?
“That is a question that all GCC leaders are asking themselves today, given that they have put all of their security eggs in the US basket.”
Matt Duss of the US-based Center for International Policy and former foreign policy adviser to Bernie Sanders, was equally scathing. “This is an attack in the capital of a major non-Nato US ally in the midst of US-supported negotiations – against officials who were originally hosted there at the United States’ request,” he said.
“It’s an attack on diplomacy itself, making clear that Netanyahu intends to see Israel’s accelerating campaign of ethnic cleansing in Gaza through to the end. If it was conducted with the approval of the US, it’s the latest nail in the coffin of Trump’s claim to be a ‘peacemaker’.”
Peter Beaumont is a senior international reporter
