Rubio meets Netanyahu in Israel as U.S. ally Qatar gathers Arab neighbors to condemn Doha attack

U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio met Monday in Jerusalem with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, as close U.S. ally Qatar gathered other Arab nations’ leaders for a summit to issue unified condemnation of last week’s Israeli airstrike targeting Hamas leaders in the Qatari capital.

On Sunday, President Trump urged Netanyahu’s government to be “very careful” following the airstrike in Doha. 

“They have to do something about Hamas, but Qatar has been a great ally to the United States,” Mr. Trump told reporters at Morristown airport in New Jersey. 

Speaking Monday alongside Rubio, Netanyahu heaped praise on the Trump administration for its staunch, increasingly unique international support of Israel’s tactics in its ongoing war against Hamas — which has long been designated a terrorist organization by the U.S., Israel and the European Union — in the Gaza Strip. 

“Your presence here today sends a clear message that America stands with Israel,” Netanyahu said.

The Israeli leader has vigorously defended last week’s strike in Doha, saying Israeli fighter jets targeted senior Hamas leaders responsible for the Hamas-led, Oct. 7, 2023 terrorist attack that killed some 1,200 people and saw 251 others taken as hostages back into Gaza.

Hamas has said that five of its members were killed, but that Israel failed to kill its intended targets — senior members of the group’s political negotiating team, who have long been based in Doha, with the knowledge and backing of both Israel and the U.S. 

Rubio, pressed to respond to the anger in Doha over the strike last week, told reporters at the news conference with Netanyahu that “we have strong relationships with our Gulf allies… We have been engaged with them consistently before what happened and after what happened.”

“Irrespective of what has occurred, the reality is we still have 48 hostages. We still have Hamas that is holding Gaza hostage and using civilians as human shields… as long as they are around there will be no peace in this region,” Rubio said. 

A senior State Department official told CBS News Monday that Rubio will travel to Qatar after his Israel visit, before flying to the United Kingdom for President Trump’s state visit there. 

Addressing reporters Saturday at Joint Base Andrews prior to his departure, Rubio said he would be speaking with Netanyahu to “get a much better understanding of what their plans are moving forward.”

“What’s happened has happened. Obviously, we were not happy about it. The president was not happy with it,” Rubio said, referring to the strike in Doha. “Now we need to move forward and figure out what comes next. Because at the end of the day, when all is said and done, there is still a group called Hamas, which is an evil group that still has weapons and is terrorizing.” 

Qatari Prime Minister Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman al-Thani issued a fresh condemnation of Israel’s attack on Sunday, and he called “for the international community to stop its double standards and punish Israel for its crimes.”

Qatar is a key U.S. ally and it has long hosted the largest American military base in the Middle East, the Al-Udeid Air Base, where there are thousands of U.S. troops based.

A source familiar with the discussions at the emergency Arab and Muslim leaders summit in Doha on Monday told CBS News a draft resolution would see them condemn, Israel’s “hostile acts including genocide, ethnic cleansing, [and] starvation” in Gaza, which, it will say, threatens “prospects of peace and coexistence” in the region.

Israel has vehemently denied multiple accusations that its war in Gaza amounts to a genocide against Palestinians, arguing that its military campaign is solely against Hamas militants whom it accuses of putting civilians in harms way by using them as human shields.  

The source familiar with the draft statement from the Doha summit said the resolution would call “on the international community to coordinate efforts to impose international sanctions on Israel — suspending the supply of weapons, munitions, and military material, and reviewing diplomatic and economic relations — to stop its crimes against the Palestinian people and attacks on regional countries.”

Israel’s war has killed more than 64,000 Palestinians in the nearly two years since it began, according to Gaza’s Hamas-run Ministry of Health, which does not distinguish between combatants and civilians. Israel rejects that figure but has not offered its own estimate and does not permit foreign journalists to enter Gaza and operate independently. 

The United Nations considers the tally from the Gazan health ministry the most reliable information available on the war’s death toll.

Last month, Israel declared Gaza City, the Palestinian Territory’s biggest population center, a “dangerous combat zone” and a Hamas stronghold. In recent days, Israeli military forces have ramped up an aerial assault on the city, toppling several more high-rise buildings on Sunday in what was already an apocalyptic landscape.

The U.N. General Assembly overwhelmingly voted Friday to support a two-state solution to the Israel-Palestinian conflict — the long-standing call for an independent Palestinian state to be created alongside Israel as part of a negotiated peace agreement, which has been a cornerstone of U.S. foreign policy for decades. 

President Trump, who previously voiced support for a two-state solution, has more recently distanced his administration from adherence to that objective, despite rising support internationally for Palestinian statehood.

Israel and the U.S. were among the 10 countries that voted against the resolution, and before the vote, Netanyahu reiterated his government’s stance that, “there will be no Palestinian state.”

The U.N. resolution also condemned Israel’s alleged attacks on civilians and civilian infrastructure in Gaza and its “siege and starvation, which have produced a devastating humanitarian catastrophe and protection crisis.”

The non-binding resolution, which 142 nations supported, also called for the release of all remaining Israeli hostages and outlined a vision in which the Palestinian Authority, which currently partially administers the Israeli-occupied West Bank, would govern and control all Palestinian territory, with a transitional administrative committee immediately established under its umbrella after a ceasefire in Gaza.

“In the context of ending the war in Gaza, Hamas must end its rule in Gaza and hand over its weapons to the Palestinian Authority,” the declaration said.