Qatari Prime Minister Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman al-Thani vowed on Tuesday to retaliate against Israel for its strike against Hamas’s political leadership based in Doha.
“The State of Qatar is committed to act in a decisive way with anything that would target its territories and will reserve the right to retaliate and will take all the needed measures to retaliate,” al-Thani said at a news conference on Tuesday, through a translator.
The Qatari prime minister said his minister of State will convene a meeting on Wednesday to “review all the policies and directives in order to deter such actions and measures in the future so that it cannot happen again.”
Al-Thani called the strike on Doha “state terrorism” by Israel and took aim at Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who al-Thani said threatened regional security and violated the sovereignty of nearby nations.
“I think that we have reached a decisive moment. There should be retaliation from the whole region in the face of those barbaric actions that only reflects one thing: It reflects the barbarism of this person that is leading the region, unfortunately, to a point where we cannot address any situation and we cannot repair anything, and we cannot work within the frameworks of international laws. He just violates all those international laws,” al-Thani said through the translator, referring to Netanyahu.
Israel escalated its war against Hamas on Tuesday by launching an assassination strike on Hamas’s political leadership based in Qatar. The move appeared to end any efforts to release hostages through negotiation, which have been taking place in Qatar and with the help of its leaders.
Even as Qatar vowed to retaliate, the country maintained that it would not abandon its role as a mediator in many regional negotiations.
“Mediation and Qatari diplomacy is part of its identity, and it will continue, and nothing will deter us from persisting in this role across the various issues around us in the region, in order to achieve the stability of the region and ultimately the stability of our peoples,” al-Thani said on Tuesday.
