• Trump again annoyed at Netanyahu, but rupture unlikely.
• Analysts see Trump’s support for Israel despite disagreements.
• Israel kept Washington in dark about Qatar strikes, officials say.

WASHINGTON: Less than four months ago, President Donald Trump met with the leader of Qatar, praising his opulent palace and signing a sweeping defence agreement with the Gulf monarchy, a key ally that hosts the biggest US base in the Middle East.

Israel’s surprise attack on Tuesday against Hamas leaders in Doha has jolted that relationship, angering Trump and drawing fierce condemnation from Doha and Western allies.

Ordered by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and targeting the political offices of the Palestinian group, the strikes killed a Qatari security agent and five others, but failed to kill the Hamas leaders. Trump said he was “very unhappy about every aspect” of the Israeli operation.

But for all the indignation, the strikes are unlikely to change the president’s fundamental approach toward Israel, analysts and US officials say. If anything, the bombings underlined the cold calculus beneath the Trump-Netanyahu relationship.

Israel has shown it is not afraid to act against US interests. The administration of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu did not formally warn Washington of its impending bombing campaign on Tuesday, US officials said.

That lack of warning recalled Israel’s September 2024 attack on Hezbollah, when Israel wounded thousands of the group’s members with booby-trapped pagers, without informing then-President Joe Biden.

Trump, for his part, has occasionally expressed displeasure with Netanyahu. But his administration has strongly supported Israel’s campaign to weaken Hamas and allowed it to largely take the lead on key issues such as Iran’s nuclear program.

“On this one, I think Trump is annoyed by Netanyahu’s tactics,” said Aaron David Miller, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and veteran US peace negotiator.

But, Miller added, “(Trump’s) instinct is that he agrees with Netanyahu’s notion that Hamas cannot just be hollowed out as a military organisation. It needs to be fundamentally weakened.”

Asked for comment, the White House referred Reuters to remarks by Trump on Truth Social on Tuesday night, during which he said the bombings did not advance US or Israeli interests.

“However,” Trump wrote, “eliminating Hamas, who have profited off the misery of those living in Gaza, is a worthy goal.”

The Israeli Embassy in Washington did not respond to a request for comment.

No rupture likely

Some analysts declined to rule out the possibility that Netanyahu may yet exhaust Trump’s patience if he springs more surprises on Washington.

 In practice, that could mean a withdrawal of political cover for Israel’s ongoing invasion of Gaza, which has provoked outrage among European and Arab nations as famine conditions spread.

Israel’s military campaign in the Palestinian enclave was triggered by a Hamas-led rampage in southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023.

“As his Arab friends complain to him about what Israel is doing — and they are doing so now — he may say to them give me a credible plan for the day after in Gaza and with an alternative to Hamas running it and I will tell Bibi you have done enough,” said Dennis Ross, a former Middle East negotiator for Democratic and Republican administrations.

Israel’s strike in Doha will likely dampen Trump’s hopes for more Gulf states joining the Abraham Accords, a landmark agreement brokered by his first administration in which several Arab countries forged diplomatic ties with Israel.

Still, a rupture between the two men seems unlikely, argued Michael Oren, Israel’s former ambassador to the United States, saying that Trump appreciates strength and transactions that end wars.

“If Netanyahu can continue to appeal to those two sides of this president then he will be okay. I’m not concerned about the relationship,” said Oren.

Hot and cold

The Trump-Netanyahu partnership has seen ups and downs, administration officials acknowledge.

“It’s been hot and cold since the campaign,” said one senior White House official.

In May, Trump travelled to Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates during his first major foreign trip, skipping Israel, which many analysts viewed as a snub. The Republican president returned to office in January promising to reinvigorate relations with Netanyahu that had deteriorated under his Democratic predecessor.

During that trip, Trump agreed to lift sanctions on the new Syrian government at the behest of Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. That move alarmed Israeli officials who question the motives of Syrian President Ahmed al-Sharaa, a former al-Qaeda commander.

But just a month later, the Trump-Netanyahu alliance seemed back on track. After Israel launched an air war on Iran in June, Trump — who campaigned on ending foreign conflicts — surprised even some of his own political allies by sending B-2 bombers to partially destroy Iran’s key nuclear facilities.

If that created goodwill within the Netanyahu administration, it did not benefit Trump’s foreign policy interests, at least in the short term.

Days later, Trump profanely chastised Iran and Israel for breaking a US-brokered ceasefire. In July, the US appeared to criticise an Israeli strike in Damascus, which destroyed part of Syria’s defence ministry. And on Tuesday, Israel notified the US shortly before the Qatar strike, but there was no coordination with or approval from Washington, two US officials said.

“The US can seek to cajole and push Israel to take decisions,” said Jonathan Panikoff, a former deputy US national intelligence officer on the Middle East. “But Netanyahu will continue to act in a manner that it views as in the best interests of Israel alone.”

• VP Vance and victims’ families attend memorial events at Ground Zero. 
• Nearly 3,000 people killed in coordinated attacks on World Trade Centre. 
• Moment of silence, bell tolls at 8:46am to mark time Flight 11 hit North Tower. 

New York prepared to mark the devastating attacks of September 11, 2001 on Thursday, 24 years after the deadly plane hijackings that claimed almost 3,000 lives and forever changed the United States.

Vice President JD Vance was expected to attend memorial events at Ground Zero in Manhattan where the World Trade Center’s twin towers were destroyed in coordinated attacks that also saw a jetliner crashed into the nerve center of American military power, the Pentagon in Washington.

Another jet, Flight 93, crashed into the Pennsylvania countryside when passengers overran the hijacker and took control of the aircraft.

This year’s gathering takes place against a backdrop of sharp political division both in the city and nationally.

New York is in the grip of an unprecedented mayoral election campaign in which socialist Democratic candidate Zohran Mamdani is facing off against former governor Andrew Cuomo and sitting mayor Eric Adams.

New Yorkers go to the polls on November 4.

It was unclear which of the mayoral candidates would attend the ceremony that is always attended by the sitting mayor as well as community leaders.

President Donald Trump has repeatedly attacked Mamdani, a Muslim and naturalised US citizen, calling him a “communist lunatic,” while one Republican lawmaker has called for the race’s frontrunner to be deported.

Mamdani holds a 22 point lead in the race, according to the latest polling from The New York Times and Siena.

“It was this horrific day that was also for many New Yorkers the moment at which they were marked an ‘other’,” Mamdani told The Times, describing the surge in Islamophobic attacks that followed 9/11.

It was unclear if Trump would attend New York’s commemorative events as he has in years past.

The United States has faced a rash of political violence in recent months, with the killing of conservative influencer Charlie Kirk following the targeted killing of a Democratic Minnesota lawmaker and her husband and the firebombing of a Democratic governor’s residence.

New York will mark a citywide moment of silence at 8:46am (1246 GMT), the time that hijacked Flight 11 struck the North Tower of the World Trade Centre.

Places of worship across the city will sound their bells to mark the impact as families of the victims read the names of those killed at ground zero.

The official death toll was 2,977 including the passengers and crew of the four hijacked planes, victims in the twin towers, firefighters, and personnel at the Pentagon. The death toll excludes the 19 Al-Qaeda hijackers.

Qatar’s Prime Minister on Wednesday condemned an unprecedented Israeli strike in Doha targeting Hamas, saying it has destroyed hopes for the release of Gaza hostages. He called for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to be “brought to justice,” criticizing the attack as a severe escalation in the ongoing conflict.

His comments came a day after deadly strikes targeted Hamas leaders in Qatar — a US ally — a first in the oil-rich Gulf that rattled a region long shielded from conflict.

“I think that what Netanyahu has done yesterday, he just killed any hope for those hostages,” Qatari Prime Minister Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al Thani told CNN.

Doha is “reassessing everything” around their involvement in future ceasefire talks and discussing next steps with Washington, he added in comments cited in CNN’s live blog after an interview with the broadcaster.

The attack, just three months after Iran launched a retaliatory strike on a US airbase in Qatar, also cast serious doubt on Qatar-mediated Gaza ceasefire talks and undermined security reassurances to the Gulf from key ally Washington.

Earlier Wednesday, Defence Minister Israel Katz vowed that Israel would “act against its enemies anywhere” while Netanyahu urged Qatar to expel Hamas officials or hold them to account, “because if you don’t, we will”.

Qatar has hosted Hamas’s political bureau since 2012 with Washington’s blessing, and has been a key mediator in Gaza talks alongside Egypt and the United States.

Israel’s military said it struck Huthi targets in Yemen on Wednesday, including in the capital Sanaa, killing 35 people according to the rebels.

Palestinian militant group Hamas said six people were killed in Tuesday’s strikes in Qatar, but its senior leaders had survived, affirming “the enemy’s failure to assassinate our brothers in the negotiating delegation”.

The White House said Trump did not agree with Israel’s decision to take military action.

Trump said he was not notified in advance and when he heard, asked his envoy Steve Witkoff to warn Qatar immediately — but the attack had already started.

Israel’s ambassador to the United Nations, Danny Danon, sought to justify the decision, telling an Israeli radio station: “It was not an attack on Qatar; it was an attack on Hamas.”

– ‘Shaken conscience of world’ –

Hamas political bureau member Hossam Badran said Israel “represents a real danger to the security and stability of the region”.

“It is in an open war with everyone, not just with the Palestinian people,” he said.

In Gaza City on Wednesday, the Israeli military destroyed another high-rise building as it intensified its assault on the territory’s largest urban centre, despite mounting calls to end its campaign.

The military issued an evacuation warning to those living in and around the Tiba 2 tower, before later saying it had “struck a high-rise building that was used by the Hamas terrorist organisation”.

AFP images showed huge plumes of smoke billowing into the sky as the residential tower in western Gaza City crashed to the ground.

In the aftermath, young girls rushed to pick dust-covered dough out of the rubble.

Siham Abu al-Foul told AFP she couldn’t take anything with her when the army issued the evacuation orders.

“They brought down the tower and we came running and there was nothing left… Everything we fixed in two years was gone in a minute.”

The Israeli military said it had struck 360 targets since Friday and vowed that it would “increase the pace of targeted strikes” in the Gaza City area in the coming days.

The Gaza war has created catastrophic humanitarian conditions for the population of more than two million, with the United Nations last month declaring a famine in Gaza City and its surroundings.

EU chief Ursula von der Leyen said she would push to sanction “extremist” Israeli ministers and curb trade ties over the dire situation.

“What is happening in Gaza has shaken the conscience of the world,” she said.

– ‘Not thrilled’ –

Israel’s targeting of Hamas leaders in Qatar sparked international condemnation.

Trump said he was not notified in advance of the Israeli strikes and was “not thrilled about the whole situation”.

“I view Qatar as a strong Ally and friend of the U.S., and feel very badly about the location of the attack,” he said in a social media post, adding Hamas’s elimination was still a “worthy goal”.

Canada said it was reassessing its relationship with Israel following the Doha strikes.

Hamas’s October 2023 attack resulted in the deaths of 1,219 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally based on Israeli figures.

Of the 251 hostages seized during the assault, 47 remain in Gaza, including 25 the Israeli military says are dead.

Israel’s retaliatory offensive has killed at least 64,656 Palestinians, most of them civilians, according to figures from the health ministry in Hamas-run Gaza that the UN considers reliable.