Qatar on Sunday denounced Israel as Arab and Muslim foreign ministers convened to explore a potential coordinated response to Israel’s assault on Doha, which targeted the Hamas militant organisation’s leadership.
“We appreciate the solidarity of brotherly Arab and Islamic countries and friendly countries from the international community that condemned this barbaric Israeli attack,” Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al Thani said on Sunday.
“It expressed its full support for us and the legitimate legal measures we will take to preserve the sovereignty of our country.”
Sheikh Mohammed, who also serves as Qatar’s foreign minister, made the comments before an emergency meeting on Monday of leaders from those nations.
Ahead of the meeting, Al Thani is reported to have also met with US President Donald Trump in New York.
He said Qatar remained committed to working with Egypt and the United States to reach a ceasefire in the Israel-Hamas war that has devastated the Gaza Strip after Hamas attacked Israel nearly two years ago.
However, he said the Israeli strike that killed six people—five members of Hamas and a local Qatari security force member—represented “an attack on the principle of mediation itself.”
“This attack can only be described as state terrorism, an approach pursued by the current extremist Israeli government, which flouts international law,” the minister said.
“The reckless and treacherous Israeli aggression was committed while the state of Qatar was hosting official and public negotiations, with the knowledge of the Israeli side itself, and with the aim of achieving a ceasefire in Gaza.”
Sheikh Mohammed stressed the moment had come for consequences to Israel’s attacks in the wider Middle East. “It is time for the international community to stop applying double standards and punish Israel for all the crimes it has committed,” Sheikh Mohammed said in footage later released by Qatar’s government from the closed-door meeting.
Emergency summit to warn on normalisation of ties with Israel
Meanwhile, media reports on Sunday claimed leaders of Arab and Islamic states will warn that Israel’s strike on Qatar and other “hostile acts” pose a threat to regional attempts to normalise relations and peace.
According to an excerpt of the draft resolution quoted in the media, the leaders said “the brutal Israeli attack on Qatar and the continuation of Israel’s hostile acts including genocide, ethnic cleansing, starvation, siege, and colonising activities and expansion policies, threaten prospects of peace and coexistence in the region.”
These actions threaten “everything that has been achieved on the path of normalising ties with Israel, including current agreements and future ones,” according to the draft.
Speaking ahead of the summit on Sunday, Arab League Secretary-General Ahmed Aboul Gheit separately criticised Israel and warned that “silence in the face of a crime … paves the way for more crimes.”
There was no immediate response from Israel, which is hosting US Secretary of State Marco Rubio this weekend. But Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Saturday night again defended the strike.
“The Hamas terrorists chiefs living in Qatar don’t care about the people in Gaza,” he posted on X. “They blocked all ceasefire attempts in order to endlessly drag out the war. Getting rid of them would rid the main obstacle to releasing all our hostages and ending the war.”
Hamas official Bassem Naim said in a statement that the organization hopes that the summit on Monday will produce “a unified and decisive Arab–Islamic stance” on the war.
A key regional mediator in disputes, Qatar, an energy-rich country on the Arabian Peninsula, has been housing Hamas’ senior leadership for years at the request of the US, giving Israel a direct line of communication with the militant group that has long ruled Gaza.
But as the Israel-Hamas war has raged on, Qatar increasingly has been criticised by hard-liners within Netanyahu’s government.
Netanyahu himself has vowed to strike all those who organised the Hamas-led attack on Israel in 2023, and in the time since the attack in Qatar, he has doubled down on saying Qatar remains a possible target if Hamas leaders are there.