Following last week’s Israeli strike targeting Hamas leaders in Doha, US President Donald Trump told reporters Israel must be “very, very careful” about how it handles Qatar, which he called a “great ally.”

In comments at Morristown Airport in New Jersey on Sunday, Trump added that Israel has “to do something about Hamas,” and said Qatar needs to burnish its public image. The brief comments, in response to a reporter’s question, represent the latest time Trump has tried to bridge between condemning the strike on a US ally and saying Hamas’s leaders must be eliminated.

The days since the strike have seen a diplomatic flurry around its fallout. Trump dined with Qatar’s prime minister on Friday, and on Sunday, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio landed in Israel to meet with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. On Monday, the leaders of Arab and Islamic states are due to meet in Doha for an emergency gathering in the wake of the attack, which is expected to lead to a statement denouncing Israel.

“My message is this: They have to be very, very careful. They have to do something about Hamas, but Qatar has been a great ally to the United States,” Trump said on Sunday, when asked whether he had a message for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu about the strike.

“So Israel and everybody else, we have to be careful,” he added. “When we attack people, we have to be careful.”

Trump sounded similar notes shortly after the September 9 attack, when he posted on social media that the strike “does not advance Israel or America’s goals” but said that eliminating Hamas is a “worthy goal.” Both Israeli and Hamas officials have conveyed that the strike failed to kill the terror group’s leaders, and reports have emerged of internal Israeli divisions in the lead-up to the strike.

Trump: They have be very careful. They have to do something about Hamas. But Qatar has been a great ally to the US. A lot of people don’t know that.

— Acyn (@Acyn) September 14, 2025

Channel 12 reported on Sunday that in the aftermath of the attack, Mossad director David Barnea sent an agency-wide letter explaining why he had opposed it and had been unwilling for the spy agency to take part.

According to the report, Barnea explained that he had not wanted Israel to move forward with the strike at that time, because the targeted Hamas officials had gathered to discuss a new US-sponsored proposal for a ceasefire in Gaza and the release of the remaining Israeli hostages the terror group holds there.

That meeting, he reportedly explained, would almost certainly have led to progress in the ceasefire talks and paved the way for both sides to return to the negotiating table, even if Hamas had not fully accepted the US proposal.

The Mossad declined to comment on the report, Channel 12 said.

At issue, according to Channel 12, was what Israel’s security brass thought Hamas’s response would be. The Shin Bet, which is currently being led in an interim capacity by a former deputy identified only as “Shin,” assessed that Hamas was likely to reject the US proposal entirely. Barnea believed that it could go either way.

IDF Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Eyal Zamir and National Security Adviser Tzachi Hanegbi both reportedly agreed with Barnea’s assessment, and the three recommended that Israel hold fire until a clearer picture emerged.

But the Shin Bet’s position was that Hamas was unlikely to issue a positive response and that there was a limited window to carry out the attack. That view was reportedly shared by Netanyahu and Defense Minister Israel Katz, triggering the strike.

Now, the region is grappling with the strike’s implications. Qatari Prime Minister Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman al-Thani has accused Israel of “state terrorism” but vowed that his country will continue in its role mediating between Israel and Hamas to reach an end to the nearly two-year-long war in Gaza. And on Monday, it is hosting a summit that will bring together leaders from the Arab League and the Organization of Islamic Cooperation.

Top officials from Iran, Iraq, Turkey, and other countries are expected at the meeting, and on Sunday, foreign ministers of participating states put together a draft resolution to be discussed on Monday. The resolution suggests that Arab states that have normalized relations with Israel, such as the United Arab Emirates, could sever those ties — though the text apparently does not explicitly recommend that step.

I am in Doha with a clear message from the Iranian People:

Iran stands with Qatar and indeed all Muslim brothers and sisters, particularly against the scourge that is terrorizing the region. pic.twitter.com/vo4H6D9kZy

— Seyed Abbas Araghchi (@araghchi) September 15, 2025

An excerpt of the draft resolution seen by Reuters said “the brutal Israeli attack on Qatar and the continuation of Israel’s hostile acts including genocide, ethnic cleansing, starvation, siege, and colonizing activities and expansion policies threatens prospects of peace and coexistence in the region.”

Israel denies accusations of genocide and ethnic cleansing in Gaza, where it says it is working to destroy Hamas in the wake of the October 7, 2023 massacre that killed some 1,200 people and saw another 251 taken hostage.

These actions threaten “everything that has been achieved on the path of normalizing ties with Israel including current agreements and future ones,” according to the draft, in a reference to the US-brokered efforts to expand the Abraham accords in which Israel signed normalization agreements with the UAE, Bahrain and Morocco.

The summit also provides a diplomatic boost for Qatar. In his remarks, Trump said the country needed to improve its public relations — an area where the oil-rich Gulf state has, famously, invested billions of dollars.

It funnels massive amounts of money to US universities, has a large lobbying operation in Washington, DC, and controversially offered to give Trump an airplane as a gift, in addition to hosting the 2022 World Cup.

“I told the emir, who I think is a wonderful person, actually, I said, ‘You need better public relations, because you don’t really get the public relations,'” he said, referring to Qatar’s leader. “I mean, people talk of it so badly and they shouldn’t be. Qatar has been a very great ally.”