Israel attack on Qatar: U.N. rights council to hold urgent debate Sept 16

The United Nations Human Rights Council said it would host an urgent debate on Tuesday (September 16, 2025) on Israel’s airstrike targeting Hamas leaders in Qatar.

The council said on Monday (September 15, 2025) the debate would be convened after it received two official requests, one from Pakistan on behalf of member states of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation, and the other from Kuwait on behalf of the Cooperation Council for the Arab States of the Gulf.

The U.N. council said its 10th urgent debate since its creation in 2006 would “discuss the recent military aggression carried out by the State of Israel against the State of Qatar on 9 September 2025’”.

Israel targeted Hamas leaders last week in strikes on the Qatari capital, killing five Hamas members and a Qatari security officer.

The attack drew widespread international condemnation, including from Gulf monarchies allied with the United States, Israel’s main backer.

U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio takes up Qatar strike unease with Netanyahu

The U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio met on Monday (September 15, 2025) with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu as Israel’s vital ally voices unease over air strikes on Qatar that threaten to derail already flailing attempts to reach a Gaza ceasefire.

Mr. Rubio scheduled a solidarity visit a week before a French-led summit at the United Nations to recognise a Palestinian state, a prospect fervently opposed by Mr. Netanyahu’s right-wing government.

But talks will instead be more difficult as President Donald Trump’s administration was caught off guard last week when Israel carried out an attack in Qatar against Hamas leaders who were meeting to discuss a new U.S. ceasefire proposal for Gaza.

Mr. Trump, for years a fervent defender of MNr*. Netanyahu, on Sunday (September 14, 2025) again voiced support for Qatar, which is home to the largest US air base in the region and has assiduously courted the U.S. President, including by gifting a luxury jet.

“Qatar has been a very great ally. Israel and everyone else, we have to be careful. When we attack people we have to be careful,” Mr. Trump told reporters.

Mr. Rubio, who will later address the press with Mr. Netanyahu, said as he left Washington that “obviously we’re not happy” about the strike but added: “Now we need to move forward and figure out what comes next”.

Mr. Rubio said he would speak to Netanyahu about Israeli military plans to seize Gaza City, the largest urban centre in the devastated territory, as well as the government’s talk of annexing parts of the occupied West Bank in hopes of precluding a Palestinian state.

Mr. Rubio said Mr. Trump wants the Gaza war to be “finished with” — which would mean the release of hostages and ensuring Hamas is “no longer a threat”.

The war was sparked by Hamas’s October 7, 2023 attack on Israel, which resulted in the deaths of 1,219 people, most of them civilians, according to an AFP tally of official figures.

Israel’s retaliatory campaign in Gaza has killed at least 64,871 people, also mostly civilians, according to figures from the health ministry in Hamas-run Gaza that the United Nations considers reliable.