Funeral in Doha for 5 people killed in the September 10 Israeli strike. Photo: AFP
Responding to Israel’s September 10 attack aimed at Hamas negotiators in Qatar, all 12 members of the UN Security Council issued a toothless statement of condemnation that didn’t even mention Israel by name. This cowardly response underscores the pathetic international reaction to nearly two years of genocide.
Israel believes it can do whatever it wants, wherever it wants, with no consequences–which has been true for two years now. It has already destroyed Gaza. It is expanding settlements, annexing the West Bank, threatening Lebanon, Syria, Yemen, and Iran. It has attacked aid flotillas, bombed refugee camps, and assassinated negotiators. Now it has bombed a U.S.-allied Gulf capital. And still, the world hesitates.
One would think that the bombing of Qatar — a U.S. ally, the home of U.S. Central Command, and the very place where ceasefire negotiations were being brokered–would be a game-changer. The strike killed five Hamas staffers and a Qatari security officer. The senior Hamas leaders survived, but the real target was not just them. The target was diplomacy itself.
Trump, for his part, has been playing a double game: issuing ultimatums to Hamas while allowing Israel to bomb the very negotiators the U.S. asked Qatar to host. His excuse that his envoy “called too late” to warn Doha is laughable. The truth is simpler: Washington could have stopped this. Its air defenses sat idle. Its umbrella of “protection” never opened. The U.S. is not a bystander; it is complicit.
Netanyahu bragged about authorizing a “surgical precision strike” in Doha on what he called “terrorist chiefs.” But let’s be clear: this was state terrorism, carried out in broad daylight against a sovereign country at the heart of U.S. strategy in the Gulf. It was an assassination attempt deliberately timed to blow up the possibility of a ceasefire by killing the very negotiators needed to reach one. For nearly two years, the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, has consistently obstructed ceasefire talks. The strike on Doha is final proof that Israel has no interest in peace — only endless war.
In Europe, close Israeli allies Germany, France, and Britain condemned the strike, as did China and Russia. Even in Israel, the attack provoked outrage from hostage families. Einav Zangauker, whose son is captive in Gaza, said Netanyahu had “essentially sentenced my Matan to death.” She asked the question millions are asking: Why does Israel blow up every small chance for a deal?
And the Arab world? Qatar’s prime minister Mohammed Al Thani called the attack “state terrorism,” warning the region that Netanyahu is destabilizing everything and that Netanyahu needs to be brought to justice. Saudi Arabia called it “a violation of international law and an unacceptable aggression against a fellow Arab state.” Jordan warned of “dangerous escalation.” The UAE expressed “grave concern.”
Yet words are cheap. Where is the action? Where is the red line? Arab states have watched Palestinians burned alive in tents, starved at aid lines, bombed in their homes for two years — and offered little more than statements.
If the world allows Israel to get away with bombing Doha, then no country in the Middle East is safe. Arab leaders who rushed to normalize with Israel under Trump’s so-called Abraham Accords–the UAE, Morocco, Bahrain, Sudan–now find themselves exposed as collaborators while Netanyahu bombs Arab capitals with impunity. The very least they must do right now is rescind those accords, and the rest of the Arab world must denounce any moves to normalize relations.
Qatar is convening an emergency Arab-Islamic summit and has called for a collective Arab response. This must be more than words: a coordinated campaign to cut trade, sever ties, and impose sanctions on the rogue Israeli state.
From there, the crisis will move to New York. As the new session of the UN opens and the U.S. continues to use its veto to stop the Security Council from taking action, the General Assembly must put the crisis at the top of its agenda. It must invoke the Uniting for Peace resolution to call for the following:
- A UN protection force to deliver humanitarian aid, protect civilians, preserve evidence of war crimes, and facilitate reconstruction;
- Comprehensive sanctions and military embargo;
- Withdrawal of Israel’s General Assembly credentials;
- Reactivation of the UN’s long-dormant anti-apartheid mechanism, and
- Establishing a war crimes tribunal.
The world is watching, and millions of people across continents are demanding an end to this genocide. The UN General Assembly still has the opportunity to rise to the occasion, proving that international law is more than just words on paper. The bombing of Doha should be the breaking point — the moment the world finally acts.
The desperation of Israel’s Qatar attack
by Paul Larudee / September 12th, 2025
Israel might claim that they were not attacking Qatar per se, but rather Hamas in Qatar, but that is neither a distinction nor a difference. Qatar is considered neutral territory in the region, a place where representatives of Hamas, the Israeli government, the US, Egypt, and other interlocutors could meet and negotiate safely. Qatari territory was, until now, tacitly inviolable.
Israel’s attack is clearly a sign of desperation. From Israel’s point of view, Hamas went too far in accepting Israel’s ceasefire terms. Those terms were designed to be unacceptable but to have the appearance of justification, so as to be able to condemn a Hamas rejection.
Apparently, Israel made an offer that was unintentionally reasonable enough for Hamas to accept. Israel doesn’t want a ceasefire, only another pretext to continue the Gaza genocide to its ultimate conclusion. Not that a pretext is needed, from Israel’s point of view, but a fig leaf is always preferable to cover the last bit of embarrassing exposure.
Nevertheless, the Israeli attack on Qatar reveals the depths of Israeli despair. Israel can no longer afford a ceasefire – not even to satisfy the demands for the release of Israeli captives. Its vaunted military consists of little more than an air force with unlimited US bombs and refueling facilities. The last ceasefire significantly reversed the ethnic cleansing of northern Gaza, and the infantry is so decimated by unaccustomed casualties, flight abroad, and refusal to serve, that it can barely muster the equivalent of a single division. A second ceasefire would be disastrous. Meanwhile, Hamas has more recruits than it can use, and an unlimited supply of unexploded Israeli ordnance to repurpose in workshops deep underground.
Increasingly, it appears that the outcome in Gaza may include no ceasefire or pause, much less a truce, dénouement, or agreement, but rather a fight to the finish, with only one side left standing. Alternatively, Israel could decide to withdraw strategically rather than see its population dwindle inside a fortress of die-hard fanatics unable to dominate the territory that it covets.
In fact, the uncertainties threaten to take us into unknown territory. Israel’s status as a pariah state is growing dramatically, while its dependence on a dwindling number of supporters makes the unthinkable increasingly plausible. Will the world finally defy or prevail upon the US to end the genocide? Will Israel use or threaten to use its nuclear arsenal on its neighbors to make them accept an unwilling Palestinian population into their territory? Will a joint Israeli-US attempt to destroy Iran unleash a global military conflict, with unpredictable consequences?
We can only hope that a receding supply of saner minds will be adequate to the daunting task ahead.
Paul Larudee is a retired academic and current administrator of a nonprofit human rights and humanitarian aid organization. Read other articles by Paul.
Buying Time: Israel’s Rogue Attack on
Qatar
by Binoy Kampmark / September 11th, 2025
It’s all part of a stratagem, bleak and brutal. With Palestinian recognition being promised by France, the UK, Canada and Australia at the 80th session of the United Nations General Assembly, Israeli aggression is becoming more brazen and panicked. Time must be bought on one vital front: creating a Greater Israel, involving the annexation of Gaza and extinguishing, as far as possible, the power of the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank. What follows from this is the termination of Palestinian statehood altogether, including its political representatives.
Israel’s efforts have, for that purpose, focused on killing Hamas militants at enormous cost to Palestinian civilians while also attempting to eradicate the diplomatic presence of the organisation. The attack on a building in Doha, Qatar on September 9 was a case in point. The intention of the attack by the IDF, involving 15 Israeli fighter jets and an unspecified number of drones, was killing senior Hamas officials involved in discussing a ceasefire proposal advanced by US President Donald Trump. Were it to be accepted, that proposal would see the release of all Israeli hostages (dead and alive) in exchange for Palestinian prisoners, followed by a ceasefire of 60 days duration and ongoing negotiations towards an agreement concluding the war. Qatar had been putting pressure on Hamas to accept the proposal.
While Hamas personnel were killed, such senior negotiators as Khalil al-Hayya (who lost his son), Zaher Jabarin, and Khaled Mashal, were spared. Seven perished in the strike, with Qatar losing two security officers. Yet again, Israel’s military action demonstrated a reading of international law that tilts towards anarchical self-assurance, indifferent to any sovereignty that is not its own. As Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu reasoned, Qatar was hosting terrorists. “I say to Qatar and all nations who harbour terrorists, you either expel them or you bring them to justice. Because you don’t, we will.”
Israeli officials, in keeping with an established, somewhat jaundiced view of international relations, advanced a novel, unhinged reading of the attack on Qatari soil. Israeli Ambassador to the US, Yechiel Leiter, offered his dash of drivel by suggesting that this would “actually advance the efforts for a ceasefire and peace.” And as for the Hamas leaders, “if we didn’t get them this time, we’ll get them the next time.”
A condemnation of Netanyahu’s comments followed from Qatar’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, which described them as a “shameful attempt … to justify the cowardly attack that targeted Qatari territory, as well as the explicit threats of future violations of state sovereignty.”
Qatar’s Prime Minister Mohammed bin Abdulrahman bin Jassim Al Thani, undoubtedly stung that his country’s modernised military had failed to protect the capital, drew the obvious conclusion. The strike had been motivated by Israel’s desire to eliminate “any chance of peace” in Gaza, and effectively sealed the fate of the Israeli hostages still being held in the Strip. “Everything in the meeting is very well known to the Israelis and the Americans. It’s not something that we are hiding.”
He also demanded some “collective response” to the attack. “There is a response that will happen from the region. This response is currently under consultation and discussion with other partners in the region,” he explained to CNN. What that will look like is by no means clear, given the temperamental nature of relations between the various Gulf states. Al Jazeera’s Charles Stratford reports that a legal committee is being pooled to consider “all legal avenues to have Netanyahu tried for breaking international law.”
Even Israel’s least conditional sponsor felt that things had gone too far. “I’m not thrilled by it,” stated Trump as he arrived at a restaurant in Washington. “It’s not a good situation but I will say this: We want the hostages back, but we’re not thrilled about the way it went down today.” He went further, saying he was “very unhappy about it, very unhappy about every aspect.” The President had every reason to harbour such sentiments, given the value of US-Qatar relations and the hosting of US forces at Al-Udeid, the largest US airbase in the Middle East. If Doha can be attacked with impunity, an American military presence becomes less impressive. This was a point Iran’s state-run Press TV found too delicious to avoid. “Did you know,” went the network’s post on X, “that Qatar hosts one of the US’s biggest military bases in the Persian Gulf, with many air defense systems present, yet none of the American THAAD systems fired a single shot to defend Qatar against the Israel invasion?”
The Israeli PM’s list of legal woes is further reason time is being bought. Israel’s strikes across the Middle East this year have been efforts to keep war in the spotlight, peace suspended, and Netanyahu out of jail. The war in Gaza, the attacks on the Houthis in Yemen, the strikes on Iran’s nuclear facilities or the targeting of Syria, have all become matters of personal self-interest and prolongation. Were there a serious risk of pacific calm breaking out, if only momentarily, Netanyahu would have to face something he fails to take seriously: the force of the law.
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