US President Donald Trump looks over at Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel during a dinner at the White House on July 7. Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth is at right rear. Photo / Haiyun Jiang, The New York Times
The Israeli jets over the Red Sea launched a volley of missiles that arced high into the atmosphere and came down on a residential neighbourhood in Doha, Qatar, where Hamas representatives were discussing the possibility of a plan to end the war in the Gaza Strip.
The September 9 strike was a stunning provocation by Israel — negotiation by bombing the negotiators.
Even more than Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s other aggressive acts in the Middle East over the past year, this one so rankled government officials both in the region and in Washington that it threatened to blow up the prospects for a ceasefire.
But 20 days later, Netanyahu and United States President Donald Trump stood together at the White House, declaring support for a plan that could end the nearly two-year-old war.
Trump, with typical hyperbole, labelled it “a big, big day, a beautiful day, potentially one of the great days ever in civilisation”.
Netanyahu, more cautious, said the proposal “achieves our war aims”.
The brazen Israeli attack failed to kill its targets. But it motivated an angry Trump and his advisers to pressure Netanyahu into supporting a framework for ending the war.
That was after months in which the President appeared to have given the Israeli leader a free pass to continue assaulting Hamas even as the death toll and suffering among Palestinian civilians rose to levels that left Israel increasingly isolated.
The plan got a boost on Saturday when Hamas said it had agreed to release all Israeli hostages held in Gaza as well as the bodies of those who had died, in response to the peace proposal introduced by Trump.
The question is whether Hamas’ response, in the end, will satisfy Israel and the White House.
The statement, for example, did not address key elements of the US proposal that called on the group to give up its arms, which has been a major demand of Israel.
“This is a big day,” the President said in a celebratory video from the Oval Office. “We’ll see how it all turns out. We have to get the final word down in concrete.”
Even if the plan moves forward, the challenges of carrying it out would remain substantial.
Some cracks have emerged in the support of the coalition of Arab and Muslim nations that have signed on. Netanyahu watered down some elements of the proposal in a way that leaves him with considerable flexibility to continue managing the conflict on his terms.
Efforts to bring lasting peace to the Middle East tend to end in frustration, if not outright failure.
However, in bringing several of the parties together, the push by Trump and his advisers at a minimum showed promise and built on his first administration’s success in negotiating the Abraham Accords, the agreement that normalised relations between Israel and a number of Arab nations.
There is at least some optimism that what happened over the 20 days that followed the Israeli strike on Qatar — secret, high-stakes diplomacy among nations that long ago had lost trust in one another’s motives but who ultimately agreed on a path to end the war — could prove to have an enduring effect after two years of devastation begun by Hamas’ surprise attack on Israel on October 7, 2023.
It was a process that brought Jared Kushner, Trump’s son-in-law, back into his old role as Middle East negotiator.
It forced Netanyahu into a humbling apology.
And it left Hamas with what could be a final opportunity to head off an open-ended Israeli offensive.
This account is based on interviews with 14 officials from the US, Israel and several Arab governments involved in the negotiations, all of whom asked for anonymity.
“Whether or not the peace deal proves effective, the act of unifying Arab and Muslim nations around a plan also backed by Israel was perhaps the Trump Administration’s most successful act of diplomacy,” said Ned Lazarus, a professor at George Washington University’s Elliott School of International Affairs.
A surprise attack
The day before Israel’s strike in Doha, Steve Witkoff, the Administration’s Middle East envoy, and Kushner met at Witkoff’s mansion in Miami with Ron Dermer, one of Netanyahu’s closest advisers.
Over three hours that day, the three men worked over competing ceasefire proposals that they hoped to present to the Qataris later that week, and eventually to Hamas.
Dermer gave no indication to the two others that Israel was about to launch a surprise strike in Doha.
Kushner had been the Middle East envoy during Trump’s first term, and in the years since he has forged close business relationships with the leaders of numerous Gulf monarchies.
In recent months, he had been working with Tony Blair, the former British prime minister, on a post-war plan for Gaza, which they presented to the White House in August.
After the September 8 meeting in Miami ended, Dermer spent hours more on the phone with a Qatari official, until early morning Doha time.
Some 12 hours after that call ended, Israeli jets fired their missiles at the meeting in the Qatari capital, which included Hamas’ top negotiator and a planner of the October 7 attacks, Khalil al-Hayya.
The Qatari Government, alongside Egypt, has been an important international mediator in the Gaza war since its beginning. Several of Hamas’ top political leaders have lived in Doha for years, giving the Qataris access to Hamas negotiators and a degree of leverage over them.
Trump and Witkoff learned about the Israeli strike only as it was happening.
When he heard the news, Witkoff immediately called his Qatari contacts, but it was too late.
The missiles hit a residential compound where senior Hamas officials were living and killed a Qatari security officer and the son of al-Hayya. No senior Hamas officials were killed in the attack.
Witkoff was furious, and told Qatar’s Prime Minister, Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al Thani, that the White House had no role in the Israeli strike. He called other Arab governments to convey the same message.
The Qataris felt shocked and betrayed, and vented their anger to the Americans that their influence as mediators in the conflict had been neutered.
Qatari officials told Kushner — who was also angry and embarrassed about the strike — that they had been acting in good faith as negotiators, only for the Israelis to attack them as if they were Hamas’ proxy in the war.
Al Thani told a news conference in Doha: “We have reached a decisive moment where there must be a response from the entire region to such barbaric actions”. He accused the Israeli Government of trying “to sabotage every attempt to create opportunities for peace”.
The Qataris effectively suspended their mediation, and the already fragile peace negotiations foundered.
At the same time, some White House officials saw the failed strike as an opportunity.
Netanyahu had taken the shot thinking it could make his already weak enemies even weaker, but Israel had missed its targets and the strike had the opposite effect — infuriating the US and influential Arab governments.
Perhaps, the White House officials thought, the moment could be exploited to get Netanyahu to budge on some negotiating points he had long opposed.
On September 15, the Qataris convened an emergency summit of Arab and Muslim nations in a spacious ballroom at the Sheraton Hotel in Doha, and leaders who attended issued forceful condemnations of Israel.
In private, officials from some of those countries worked on a list of demands that they wanted to be incorporated into any deal to end the war in Gaza, according to two diplomats.
The final list called for, among other things, barring Israel from continuing military operations, annexing or occupying territory, and carrying out forced displacement of Palestinians in Gaza, the diplomats said.
Can Trump control Netanyahu?
The Qataris brought the Arab demands to US officials in person, travelling to New York a few days before the United Nations General Assembly began its week of high-level meetings on September 22.
During a meeting on September 20, Al Thani presented Witkoff and Kushner with the Arab demands.
The Qatari leader told them during the meeting that they needed assurances from the US that Israel would not strike Qatar again, according to a person with direct knowledge of the conversation.
As Trump and Kushner were aboard Air Force One the next day, en route to the memorial service for conservative activist Charlie Kirk, they spoke by phone to Witkoff about the details of the plan they had been working on.
Trump was insistent that any Gaza plan needed to not just involve a ceasefire but to be an “end of war plan” that all sides would agree to.
On September 23 at the UN General Assembly, Trump and Witkoff met senior officials from Arab and Muslim-majority countries and outlined the contours of a plan to end the war.
Before the meeting, representatives from those countries met at the Qatari mission in New York so they could present a united front to Trump.
Trump turned to Witkoff to present the plan, and he navigated some of the thorniest issues by being careful in his language.
Witkoff said Hamas needed to “decommission” its arms rather than “surrender” them.
He highlighted parts of the plan that included Israel withdrawing from Gaza in stages, Palestinians remaining in Gaza, the return of the hostages and amnesty for Hamas fighters.
Overall, according to representatives of the Arab governments who attended the meeting as well as US officials, the plan outlined by Trump and Witkoff was well received because it largely incorporated the major points that had been agreed upon during the meeting of the Arab and Muslim leaders in Doha earlier in September.
One Arab representative at the meeting asked whether the US supported a two-state solution.
Viewing the issue as divisive, Trump and Witkoff ducked the question, with Witkoff pivoting to a description of a post-war Gaza that he knew the Arab and Muslim countries would support.
Others asked Trump how he could guarantee that Netanyahu would agree to the plan — and actually follow through on implementing it.
Trump responded that he would handle Netanyahu on both fronts.
Trump ordered Secretary of State Marco Rubio to hold a follow-up meeting the next day. At the Lotte New York Palace, Rubio presented his counterparts from Arab and Muslim nations a written version of the plan, with 21 points in total.
There remains some dissent among Arab and Muslim-majority countries that sent representatives to the meeting with Trump.
In Pakistan, for example, the plan has drawn sharp public criticism and diverging reactions among its top leadership. Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif welcomed it, but his Foreign Minister Ishaq Dar said it was not what had been agreed upon.
“This is not our document,” the minister said last week.
“There are some key areas that we want covered,” he added at a news conference in Islamabad. “If they are not covered, they will be covered,” he said, but did not elaborate.
A forced apology, and a deal
It was now a question of whether Trump could make good on his pledge to get Netanyahu’s support.
The week before the UN General Assembly began, Netanyahu asked to meet Trump at the White House, according to two US officials. Netanyahu then told reporters that he had been “invited” to Washington, a statement that inflamed Trump’s advisers.
Yet the belief of some close to Netanyahu was that so long as Trump was not seeking to block his military objectives, it did not matter how unhappy his aides were.
On September 25, Witkoff and Kushner held tense meetings in New York with the Israeli Prime Minister.
They had Trump’s backing to stand firm against Netanyahu’s expected objections to the plan, and the bargaining session lasted for hours.
An even longer session occurred three days later, on September 28, when the US and Israeli delegations met at the Loews Regency hotel in New York.
They quibbled over issues big and small, from specific words used in the document to more substantive issues about the future of governance in the Gaza Strip.
Netanyahu was sceptical of the proposal. During the marathon session, he repeatedly pushed to massage language to reduce Israel’s commitments, and to create loopholes that might make it appear that Hamas was violating the deal.
Specifically, Netanyahu wanted to remove all references to Palestinian statehood.
He wanted to make it so that the Palestinian Authority would not run anything in Gaza, and to add caveats to the proposed Israeli withdrawal from Gaza to make it less likely that the Israeli military would retreat in full.
Trump called into the meeting throughout the day, sometimes speaking directly with Netanyahu and at other times strategising separately with Witkoff and Kushner about how to engage with the Israeli Prime Minister on specific points.
By the late hours of September 28, enough had been agreed upon for the Americans and Israelis to plan a public appearance the following day at the White House, where Trump and Netanyahu would announce the proposal.
It is not clear exactly what Trump agreed to in the way of changes, but it appears that Netanyahu managed to alter the text in Israel’s favour, especially on the issue of an Israeli withdrawal.
The plan, however, still made a vague reference to “a credible pathway to Palestinian self-determination and statehood”, which Netanyahu has opposed.
Arab countries were frustrated with some of the changes Netanyahu had secured.
As late as the day Trump and Netanyahu announced the deal some Arab officials were pushing their US counterparts to hold off announcing the full details of the plan because they were worried that Hamas would not agree to them.
They said that they would like to be able to make further edits to the plan to make it more workable.
Trump was content with the text and wanted to make it public.
First, there was the matter of Netanyahu apologising to the Qataris for the September 9 missile strike in Doha, which the Qatari Government insisted was a requirement.
For more than a week, Trump had told Netanyahu he was going to have to apologise — that even he apologised sometimes, and that it was Netanyahu’s turn to say he was sorry.
Shortly before they stood together at the White House on September 29, beaming about the prospects for peace in the Middle East, Trump and Netanyahu sat next to each other in the Oval Office.
There, a stern-looking Netanyahu held a telephone receiver as he read the apology he had written himself to Qatar’s Prime Minister.
In a photo released by the White House, the cord from the receiver stretched to Trump’s lap, on which the phone was awkwardly perched.
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.
Written by: Mark Mazzetti, Adam Rasgon, Katie Rogers and Luke Broadwater
Photographs by: Haiyun Jiang, Doug Mills, Getty Images
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