The top Hamas leaders, who reside in Qatar along with others, met on Tuesday, 9 September, to examine an American proposal for a partial ceasefire in Gaza.
While the top Hamas leaders survived, five others – including the son of senior Hamas figure Khalil Al-Hayyah and a Qatari national – were killed in the attack.
The strike prompted a wave of condemnation from nearly every member state of the two organisations, as well as from members of the UN Security Council, excluding the United States.
According to informed sources, the communiqué is to be adopted by the summit’s participating leaders, including President Abdel-Fattah El-Sisi, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian, and other leaders of the Gulf Cooperation Council, LAS, and the OIC.
Sources familiar with the preparatory consultations leading up to the summit said the communiqué of the extraordinary joint LAS-OIC summit would call on the international community, including the US, to hold Israel accountable for its grave breach of international law committed during the 9 September attack. The communiqué, the sources added, would also call on the international community to exert sufficient pressure on Israel to prevent similar attacks.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defence Minister Israel Katz have both said in public statements, in the hours and days following the Doha assault, that Israel would continue to pursue the elimination of top Hamas leaders – wherever they may be.
Netanyahu publicly stated that countries wishing to avoid being associated with such attacks should hand over the Hamas leaders residing on their territories “to justice.”
According to an Egyptian government source, like other capitals hosting Hamas leaders – whether permanently or temporarily – Cairo sent a clear message to Washington about the need to apply maximum pressure on Israel to avoid destabilising Egypt.
Sources indicate there are no fewer than five top Hamas leaders “mostly staying” in Cairo. Others come and go depending on the need for negotiations, consultations, family visits, or medical treatment.
“We made it very clear that any attempt on the life of any Palestinian on Egyptian territory would be a serious breach of sovereignty and would have grave consequences that could dramatically undermine regional stability,” the Egyptian official said.
Meanwhile, sources say that Doha expressed deep dismay to Washington over the green light it granted for the Israeli assault. Some sources suggested the dismay was compounded by an intelligence assessment indicating that Washington deliberately floated the ceasefire proposal to lure the Hamas leadership into a hastily convened meeting with inadequate security precautions. Three sources said this appeared to be an act of calculated complacency designed to enable Israel to strike with all the Hamas leaders present in one room.
However, according to one source with access to Washington’s political circles, contrary to Doha’s official narrative that the US issued a very late notification of the strike, Washington actually informed Doha a few minutes before the assault.
“This is how the Hamas leaders managed to survive the attack,” the source said. He added that by both greenlighting the Israeli raid and notifying Qatar early enough to allow the leaders to escape, Washington acted consistently with the priorities of its Middle East alliances.
Qatar hosts one of the largest overseas US military bases – Al-Udeid Air Base, southwest of Doha – and is a major purchaser of American military hardware and a significant investor in the United States. During a Gulf tour earlier this year, Trump secured a $1.2 trillion economic exchange commitment with Qatar, as well as nearly $244 billion in agreements, including a landmark sale of Boeing aircraft and GE Aerospace engines to Qatar Airways.
Qatar was one of three Gulf stops on Trump’s tour, the other two being Saudi Arabia and the UAE. In Saudi Arabia, Trump announced a $600 billion Saudi commitment for investment in what the White House called “transformative deals.”
Prince Sultan Air Base (PSAB) remains an active United States Air Force Air Expeditionary Base in Saudi Arabia, under the command of the US Air Forces Central Command.
Since the First Gulf War in January 1991, which was launched to liberate Kuwait from the Iraqi invasion of August 1990, Saudi Arabia – like Qatar and other Gulf Cooperation Council members – has relied on the United States for military support against regional threats.
The UAE is another GCC member with particularly close security and economic ties to Washington. During his spring tour, Trump secured $200 billion in new Emirati investments in the US, bringing the total from the three-stop Gulf tour to $2 trillion.
“This is a very strong pledge that indicates the long-term commitment of the Gulf countries to the US as a strategic partner,” said an Egyptian diplomat who had served in a Gulf capital. He recalled that when Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait 35 years ago, there were suggestions he did so with tacit US approval. Yet, ultimately, it was Washington that led the international coalition to liberate Kuwait and restore the ruling family.
“For many years, Kuwaiti officials kept pictures of President George Bush, who was US president at the time, in their offices,” he said. He added that since American troops were deployed to the Gulf to deter further aggression by Saddam Hussein and to help liberate Kuwait, Gulf countries have relied on Washington for their security.
According to Egyptian and Gulf sources, former US President Barack Obama’s approach to Iran, particularly following the signing of the JCPOA in 2015 and the subsequent “Obama Doctrine” – which, from a Gulf perspective, seemed to favour Iran over GCC states – led to near-unanimous Gulf support for Donald Trump’s 2016 campaign.
“We spent lavishly, and it was money well spent,” said an Emirati source who spoke on condition of anonymity. The source added that Riyadh and Abu Dhabi “saw eye-to-eye” on the matter.
“If Hillary [Clinton, the Democratic candidate at the time] had won over Trump, the Iranians would have grown stronger,” the source said, adding that Trump’s withdrawal from the JCPOA and his decision to list the Iranian Revolutionary Guard as a terrorist organisation received strong backing from both Saudi Arabia and the UAE.
The same source said there was also a determined effort to support Trump’s 2020 re-election bid against Joe Biden. Several Arab diplomatic sources said Trump received substantial backing from the same countries, along with other Arab states, during his 2024 presidential campaign against Democratic candidate Kamala Harris.
Today, however, Cairo-based European sources say the situation is different from 2016. Regardless of their misgivings about Hamas’s political and militant strategies – including the 7 October 2023 operation against southern Israel – Gulf countries are “deeply frustrated that Israel’s war on Gaza has continued at a genocidal level for almost two years, causing massive casualties, starvation, and devastation.” This, the sources argue, has become politically costly for any Arab or Muslim regime.
No GCC member, the sources add, could tolerate an Israeli air strike on the Qatari capital. “This is a matter of sovereignty for all GCC states in the face of foreign attack,” one source said.
Even so, the sources argue, none of the GCC states or other Arab or Muslim-majority countries would have expected the US to use its Al-Udeid base to intercept Israeli strikes on Doha on 9 September.
“The purpose of the US military presence in the Gulf is not about Israel – it is fundamentally about Iran or any other unpredictable regional actor,” one source explained.
With a background in military relations in the region, the source said it is therefore doubtful the GCC would seek a new strategic partner to replace the US. “This rupture of commitment does not appear to be on the table, even if most GCC members are unhappy with the policies of the second Trump administration,” the source said.
None of the sources briefed on the Doha summit expected significant blame to be laid at the White House’s door for its approval of the Israeli air raid. In fact, some sources spoke of sustained communications between Washington and Doha in recent days aimed at offering reassurances and exploring how Doha might resume its mediation efforts to end the war in Gaza.
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