President Donald Trump reportedly felt “betrayed” by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu after Israel launched a surprise strike on Hamas leaders in Qatar, a move that derailed peace talks and upended U.S. diplomacy.
Trump’s top aides, Jared Kushner and Special Envoy Steve Witkoff, said the September 9 strikes in Doha blindsided the White House and infuriated the president.
The attacks targeted Hamas negotiators with whom Trump’s team had been in talks just one day earlier. Witkoff told CBS’s 60 Minutes that Trump’s team “woke up the next morning to find out there had been this attack.”
The incident marked the first major rupture in Trump’s long-standing relationship with Netanyahu, which had defined his Middle East policy since his first administration.
Witkoff said neither he nor Kushner had any warning about Netanyahu’s plans and that both “felt betrayed.”
CBS anchor Lesley Stahl said she was told Trump was “furious” when he learned of the strikes. Kushner confirmed Trump’s frustration, saying it caused the president to rethink his approach to Israel immediately.
Kushner said Trump believed Israel had become “a little bit out of control” and that it was time to take a firmer stance to protect long-term peace efforts, per the Daily Mail.
The Israeli airstrike, which hit Hamas leaders in Doha, also shocked regional allies and threw peace negotiations into chaos. Witkoff said the Qataris were “critical” to the talks and that losing their trust “almost sunk” hopes for an agreement.
He said Hamas went “underground” following the strikes, making further negotiations nearly impossible.
Images of smoke over Doha stunned the world and marked the first time Israel had ever attacked Qatar, a nation Trump had grown increasingly close to in recent years.
Just months earlier, Trump had accepted a $400 million Boeing 747 luxury jet from Qatar, and several of his allies, including Kushner, had business ties to the Gulf state.
Trump quickly made his anger public, posting on Truth Social that he had “immediately directed special envoy Steve Witkoff to inform the Qataris of the impending attack,” but that it was “too late to stop it.”
He described Qatar as “a strong ally and friend” and said he wanted “ALL of the hostages, and bodies of the dead, released, and this War to END, NOW!”
The fallout from the attack led Trump to push through a new 20-point peace plan that was signed in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt, on October 13, officially ending the two-year Gaza war.
The accord reunited families separated since Hamas’s 2023 terror attack and was hailed as a historic diplomatic breakthrough.
Soon after the deal, however, disturbing images surfaced of Hamas executing Palestinians accused of collaborating with Israel, raising fears the fragile peace could collapse.
Kushner told 60 Minutes that Hamas’s brutality was “not surprising,” adding that the group was trying to “reconstitute and take back their positions.”
He said the peace deal’s success now depends on whether Israel and its allies can “create a viable alternative” for Gaza that ensures Hamas’s defeat once and for all.
