Trump condemns Israel’s bombing of Qatar

Donald Trump has condemned Israel’s bombing of the Hamas leadership in Qatar’s capital, Doha.

The attack on the soil of a close ally “does not advance Israel or America’s goals”, said Karoline Leavitt, Mr Trump’s press secretary.

She added that the US president was notified about the strike by the US military, not Israel.

The president then directed Steve Witkoff, his special Middle East envoy, to alert the Qataris, Ms Leavitt said.

Mr Trump “feels very badly” about the bombing and “made his thoughts and concerns about this very clear” during a conversation with Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister, she added.

The president later told reporters he was “very unhappy about the way that went down” and said he would give a full statement on Wednesday. 

Some of Mr Trump’s advisers were “infuriated” by the strikes, which “stunned” the White House, Axios reported.

Mohammed bin Abdulrahman bin Jassim bin Jaber Al Thanil, Qatar’s prime minister, claimed Israel used missiles in the attack that could not be detected by air defences.

He also accused Israel of sabotaging Gaza ceasefire efforts with a “treacherous” attack. He added that mediation efforts were “part of Qatari identity” and nothing would deter the gulf state from this role.

The Qatari leader said that a legal team was considering his country’s response to the attack, and confirmed that the US had called around 10 minutes afterwards.

The White House statement came as Hamas claimed its leader had survived the Israeli strike but his son had been killed with four others.

The leaders had gathered at the Hamas headquarters in Qatar to discuss Mr Trump’s Gaza peace plan.

If the Hamas leader has survived, the attack could be a huge miscalculation by Mr Netanyahu.

Qatar and regional allies reacted angrily to the bombings, while strong international criticism was led by Sir Keir Starmer and Emmanuel Macron, the French president.

Ten missiles blew a hole in a building where Hamas leaders were thought to be meeting in the suburbs of Doha, where they had been offered immunity.

After the attack, Mr Netanyahu said Hamas had nowhere left to hide.

Among those said to be in the building were Khalid Meshaal, the group’s leader in exile, and Khalil Al-Hayya, who has led negotiations over a ceasefire.

While the fate of the leaders has not been confirmed, the aggressive operation appeared to shut down any immediate hopes for a negotiated end to the war in Gaza.

“The days when terrorist leaders can enjoy immunity anywhere are over,” Mr Netanyahu said at the US embassy in Jerusalem, adding that he had ordered the operation to “settle accounts with the murderers”.

In an earlier joint statement with Israel Katz, Israel’s defence minister, Mr Netanyahu cast the strike as a response to the Hamas attack on a Jerusalem bus stop on Monday, in which six Israelis were shot dead.

He also sought to distance Israel’s actions from the US, which has relied on Qatari mediators to push its peace proposals.

“Israel initiated it, Israel conducted it and Israel takes full responsibility,” the statement said, revealing that the operation was launched at noon when a sudden “opportunity” was spotted.

More than 10 fighter jets fired more than 10 missiles at the Hamas headquarters, Israeli military officials said, carrying out several refuellings to make the journey.

There was initially confusion over whether the US, which has a large military base in Qatar, had approved the operation or been notified ahead of time.

A senior Israeli official told Channel 12 that Mr Trump gave the green light to the attack, but one US official told the Axios news website that warning was only given midway through the operation – leaving little time to respond.

Another White House official said the US was warned and Washington then passed on news of the impending strike to Doha, according to The Wall Street Journal.

Qatar had been thought to be safe ground for Hamas’s negotiating team given the Gulf nation’s role as a mediator in the ongoing conflict.

Sir Keir Starmer condemned the strikes which he said “violate Qatar’s sovereignty and risk further escalation across the region”.

Hamas officials told Reuters that their senior negotiating team had survived the strike. Arabic media outlets said that five people were killed, including Khalil al-Hayya’s son, Himam, and his office director.

Israeli officials, however, said they were “increasingly confident” they had killed Hamas’s top leaders and noted that the group often covers up the extent of its losses.

The Hamas officials had reportedly been meeting to discuss Mr Trump’s latest proposal for a ceasefire, based around the release of all remaining Israeli hostages in exchange for an unspecified number of Palestinian prisoners.

The proposal did not require a permanent end to the war, something Hamas demands but Israel has refused as it seeks to permanently eradicate the group.

Qatar condemned the attack which Majed al-Ansari, the foreign minister, said had struck a “residential building” used by Hamas.

Israeli officials have long objected to the group’s leaders living a life of luxury in political offices protected by diplomatic protocols.

The strike that ended that status quo came hours after Israel had ordered a complete evacuation of Gaza City ahead of what it says will be a full-frontal offensive against the last remaining populated urban centre in the Strip.

Lt Gen Eyal Zamir, the chief of staff of the Israeli military, last week said that Hamas leadership would be targeted not just in Gaza but across the “entire Middle East”.

The terrorists “will have no place to hide from us”, he told reserve soldiers.

Zaher Jabarin, Hamas’s leader in the West Bank, was said to have been in the building at the time of the attack, along with Muhammad Darwish, the head of the group’s Shura Council.

Israel has already decimated Hamas’s leadership through a series of strikes on the Gaza Strip, and reaching as far as Tehran last year to assassinate Ismail Haniyeh, the group’s former political leader.

In a series of surprise attacks, the Israeli military and intelligence services have also wiped out much of the Lebanese terror group, Hezbollah, and hamstrung its chief foe, Iran, with bombing raids and sabotage operations.

After the US joined Israel’s strikes on Iran, bombing nuclear facilities, Tehran fired missiles at Al Udeid, the US airbase in Qatar. There were no reports of damage as most of the missiles were intercepted.

Qatar claimed that the Israeli attack was conducted without US approval in an attempt to “undermine” Middle East peace negotiations.

An official Qatari source told The Telegraph: “Today’s attack clearly was designed to undermine the peace negotiations in which the United States and Qatar are collaborating closely.

“Despite conflicting media accounts, we are confident that this was a unilateral military strike conducted by Israeli forces, without advance consultation of the United States.”

Mr Trump has largely refrained from rebuking Israel despite concerns about the war in Gaza and the expansion of military operations around the Middle East.

However, analysts note that Mr Netanyahu no longer appears to be restrained by the US, increasingly conducting operations without America’s knowledge.

Qatar condemned Israel’s attack as “cowardly” while Hamas officials called it a flagrant violation of international law.

Other countries in the Middle East echoed Qatar’s condemnation. Iran, which has backed Hamas for decades, said the attack was a “criminal act that violates international law”.

Esmaeil Baghaei, the spokesman for Iran’s ministry of legal affairs, said the air strike “should make regional countries and the entire international community more vigilant”.

Saudi Arabia said it “condemns and denounces in the strongest terms the brutal Israeli aggression and the blatant violation of the sovereignty” of Qatar.

Turkey’s foreign ministry said the attack was “clear proof of Israel’s expansionist policies in the region and its adoption of terrorism as state policy”.

[Source: Daily Telegraph]