In an attempt to break the deadlocked ceasefire negotiations aiming at ending the Israeli war of aggression on Gaza, US President Donald Trump weighed in personally and proposed the immediate release of all Israeli and foreign hostages in Gaza in return for the release of hundreds of Palestinian prisoners and detainees in Israeli prisons and detention camps.
The American presidential proposal said that negotiations would commence forthwith to end the war. It was understood that with the end of the war, which will reach its second anniversary on 7 October, Hamas will no longer rule Gaza.
Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Sarr announced that the Israeli government had accepted the American proposal, while Egypt and Qatar as the mediators were in contact with the Hamas leadership to encourage it to go along with it. There were hopeful signs that Hamas would do so, even with some conditions that could be accepted by both the US administration and the Israeli government, such as increased humanitarian assistance and the opening of the crossings with the Gaza Strip, especially the Rafah Crossing with Egypt.
The contacts with Hamas were taking place, it should be noted, at the same time that Israeli forces were deploying to enter Gaza City, with a warning from the Israeli army that its inhabitants should evacuate the city and move south to Rafah close to the Egyptian border.
The Hamas leaders were expected to meet in Doha in Qatar on 9 September to decide its reply to Trump’s proposal.
However something unexpected, extremely grave, and unprecedented shook the Gulf, the Middle East, and, I would argue, the world as well, when Israel targeted the building in Doha where the Hamas leaders were to meet in order to assassinate them and their chief negotiator, Khalil Al-Haya.
The latter succeeded the late Ismail Haneya who Israel assassinated last year in Tehran as the top leader of the movement.
The Israeli attack was the first of its kind against a member state of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) and one that hosts one of the larger US military bases in the Middle East. It is one of the mediators with Egypt and the US in the Gaza conflict, whose efforts over the last two years have contributed to the release of 148 Israeli and foreign hostages in Gaza and successfully negotiated two ceasefire agreements between Hamas and the Israeli government.
The first of these, in November 2023, lasted for a week before the Israelis refused to renew it. The second was announced on 19 January this year, one day before Trump was sworn in as the 47th US president. The Israelis broke it on 2 March, after which the war in Gaza became an unmistakable war of starvation and extermination.
Arab and Muslim countries have shown full support for Qatar, whose government called for an emergency Arab and Islamic summit in Doha on 15 September.
The Israeli attacks have put the Trump administration in very delicate and awkward position. Trump visited Qatar last May, when the Qatari government gifted his administration a $400 million plane to serve as the new US Air Force One, in addition to future Qatari investments of $1.2 trillion in the US over the next few years, let alone hosting a large US military base.
It should be noted in passing that the previous administration of former US president Joe Biden made Qatar a major non-NATO ally of the US.
It strains belief to think that the American military was not notified that Israeli fighter bombers would carry out attacks in the vicinity of the US base in Doha. Not only Qatar, but also the other Gulf countries, have been under the impression that they benefit from an American defence umbrella against foreign attacks, it being understood that the country that might target them would be Iran.
It is ironic that the Americans, who for more than a decade have been pushing for regional defence agreements between Jordan and the Gulf countries and Israel with the objective of dissuading Iran, should now stand by as Israel attacks Qatar. After the Doha attacks, I believe that these plans have been shelved, hopefully forever. The reckless Israeli escalation against Qatar and the Gulf has reaffirmed to whoever wanted proof that Israel can never be an ally of any Arab country.
On 10 September, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu promised that Israel would go after Hamas leaders wherever they might be in the world. This is a blatant warning to those Arab and Muslim countries that customarily host them like Egypt and Turkey. In the last two years, Cairo has invited Hamas leaders to discuss ceasefire deals and the day after in Gaza. Would Mossad assassination teams or the Israeli Air Force dare to target Hamas leaders on Egyptian soil? If anyone in Israel thinks a repeat of the Doha attacks could be replicated in Egypt, it would be best for them to reconsider it.
If the Israeli bombing of Doha has proved anything, it is that the extreme-right ruling coalition in Israel is bent on perpetual war to keep itself in power and to go on with its plan of annexing the West Bank while banking on full American backing.
On 14 September, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio travelled to Israel to meet with Israeli leaders, and, according to the UK newspaper the Guardian, part of his mission was to convey the “irritation” – mark the description – of the US president at the Israeli strikes.
Rubio was quoted as saying that “obviously we’re not happy about it. Now we need to move forward and figure out what comes next… The incident is not going to change the nature of our relationship with the Israelis.”
It was redundant of him to say that what he described as the “incident” would not alter the “nature” of the American relationship with Israel, for no one expected a miracle in this regard. However, from Egyptian and Arab perspectives, the nature of their relationships with both the US and Israel should now be reassessed in the wake of the “incident,” to borrow Rubio’s description of the Israeli violation of Qatar sovereignty.
The attack on Qatar should concentrate Egyptian and Arab minds on two major questions. The first relates to the credibility of any sort of alliance or “strategic partnership” with the United States. The second concerns the nature of peace with Israel, a rogue and warmongering country that has been bent on the conquest of Palestinian and Arab land since its foundation in May 1948.
The writer is former assistant foreign minister.
* A version of this article appears in print in the 18 September, 2025 edition of Al-Ahram Weekly
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