Arab foreign ministers met on Sunday in the Qatari capital, Doha, to formulate a united response to Israel’s brazen missile attack last week that aimed to assassinate senior leaders of Hamas in the city.
The ministers were laying the groundwork for an emergency summit in Doha on Monday that will bring together leaders of Arab and Islamic countries.
The Israeli strike on Tuesday targeted senior Hamas officials who had gathered in the Qatari capital to discuss a U.S.-backed cease-fire proposal to stop the fighting in Gaza. It hit a residential neighborhood in broad daylight, killing several people affiliated with Hamas as well as a member of Qatar’s internal security forces.
Hamas said it had failed to kill any of the targeted officials. Israel has not released its own assessment of whether the strike had produced its intended consequences.
The attack on Qatar, a U.S. ally that hosts a major American military installation in the Middle East, drew sharp international condemnation. Even close allies of Israel have denounced it as a violation of Qatar’s sovereignty.
Marco Rubio, the U.S. secretary of state, landed in Israel on Sunday amid signs that President Trump was growing frustrated with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel over the prolonged war in Gaza.
On Sunday, Mr. Rubio and Mr. Netanyahu visited the Western Wall of Jerusalem — one of the holiest sites in Judaism. But the main meeting between the two men is expected on Monday.
Mr. Rubio said he planned to discuss the Qatar attack with Mr. Netanyahu. Mr. Trump “didn’t like the way it went down,” Mr. Rubio told reporters before his departure on Saturday.
“We’ll talk about what impact it’s going to have on efforts to get all the hostages back, get rid of Hamas, end this war,” Mr. Rubio added.
Qatari officials have said they agreed to host political leaders of Hamas at the behest of the United States to keep open channels of communication. That had positioned the country as a critical mediator in talks to end the war in Gaza.
It remains unclear how the Israeli strike will affect the cease-fire negotiations, which were already stalled. Qatar and Egypt could suspend their roles as mediators — but acting as intermediaries is a source of influence, and the two countries have stopped short of dropping out so far.
The attack sent shock waves through Gulf capitals that in recent years have been courted by Israel as potential allies and that have long regarded the United States as their main security guarantor.
“The reckless and treacherous Israeli aggression was committed while Qatar was hosting official and public negotiations, with the knowledge of the Israeli side,” Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman al-Thani, the prime minister of Qatar, said on Sunday, addressing the Arab foreign ministers in Doha.
“What encourages Israel to continue on this path is the international community’s inability to hold it accountable and the lack of consequences for any crime it commits,” he added. “We must not remain silent or complacent about this barbaric aggression and must take real, tangible measures at various levels to prevent further escalation, which, if left unchecked, will not stop.”
Analysts say that a military response by Gulf countries is out of the question because further escalation could harm the domestic agendas of the Gulf’s rulers, and because they remain dependent on American military support.
Gulf sovereign wealth funds control about $4 trillion in assets around the world, giving them financial and economic leverage that they could deploy against Israel or its U.S. ally, which supplies the country with weapons.
The regional leaders could decide to downgrade or abrogate the Abraham Accords, a 2020 deal backed by the United States, under which the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain and Morocco established diplomatic relations with Israel.
Mr. Netanyahu has defended the attack in Doha. In comments on social media Saturday night, he claimed that the Hamas leaders outside Gaza had “blocked all cease-fire attempts in order to endlessly drag out of the war.”
“Getting rid of them would rid the main obstacle to releasing all our hostages and ending the war,” he said.
Mr. Netanyahu’s opponents — including many Israelis — argue that he is the one who has dragged the war out to mollify his hard-line coalition allies. The war in Gaza began after Hamas led the Oct. 7, 2023, attack on Israel.
Mr. Netanyahu is wanted by the International Criminal Court for war crimes. Human rights groups argue that the campaign in Gaza now constitutes a genocide.
Israeli officials dispute that charge and argue that they are fighting a defensive war. They say Hamas could end the fighting by laying down its arms and returning the hostages still held in the enclave, which it has refused to do.
Israel is now gearing up for a large-scale operation to seize Gaza City, a major population center. The military has ordered hundreds of thousands of city residents to flee south to already crowded areas.
Many Palestinians have been reluctant to move again. There is no safe place to go, although Israel has designated a “humanitarian zone” farther south.
Hwaida Saad contributed reporting from Beirut.
Vivian Nereim is the lead reporter for The Times covering the countries of the Arabian Peninsula. She is based in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia.
Aaron Boxerman is a Times reporter covering Israel and Gaza. He is based in Jerusalem.
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