By Asmahan Qarjouli,United States President
Copyright dohanews
Hamad said Israel carried out the attack less than an hour after the group started reviewing the new U.S. proposal.
Israel dropped around 12 rockets within less than a minute on Qatar during last week’s attack, top Hamas official Ghazi Hamad told Al Jazeera Arabic on Wednesday.
“The missiles were falling continuously without stopping. I don’t know, there were around 12 missiles within a minute. So the reality was difficult and harsh,” Hamad said in his first public appearance since the attack on September 9.
The attack targeted a residential building housing members of Hamas’s political office in the middle of a neighbourhood that includes houses, embassies, schools and nurseries.
The bombing killed five Hamas members and 22-year-old Corporal Bader Al-Humaidi Al-Dosari, a member of Qatar’s Internal Security Force (Lekhwiya).
Israel struck the site while Hamas’s negotiators were discussing a Gaza ceasefire proposal presented by United States President Donald Trump.
The group had already accepted a proposal presented by the mediators on August 18, but Israel did not respond to it while continuing its genocide in the Gaza Strip.
Hamad said Israel carried out the attack less than an hour after the group started reviewing the new proposal.
“We were in a meeting with the negotiating delegation and some advisers. Less than an hour after we began reviewing the American proposal that we received from the Qatari mediators, we heard loud explosions,” Hamad said.
Hamad said the Hamas members’ familiarity with the sound of the rockets from Israel’s previous aggressions on Gaza prompted them to leave the area.
“We are familiar with the sound of rockets after all the wars in the Gaza Strip. So we quickly realised what was happening and started to leave the place, because we were fully convinced that this was an Israeli strike,” he explained.
Qatar has hosted the Hamas political office since 2012 at the request of the U.S. to maintain an open channel of communications in mediation efforts.
The move enabled Qatar to assume its pivotal mediation role, alongside Egypt and the U.S., since the onset of the Israeli genocide on October 7, 2023. Mediation efforts resulted in the release of at least 135 Israeli captives from Hamas.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu repeatedly vowed to strike Qatar again if it did not expel Hamas members, despite the crucial mediation role played by the Gulf state.
On Monday, Arab and Muslim leaders gathered in Doha for an emergency summit to discuss the attack. Qatar’s Amir Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani spoke at the summit for the first time since the attack, which was described as “blatant, treacherous and cowardly”.
“This aggression is in reality blatant, treacherous and cowardly. It is impossible to deal with such a degree of malice and treachery,” Sheikh Tamim said.
Meanwhile, Israel has insisted on continuing its war on the Gaza Strip, which a United Nations inquiry on Tuesday ruled as a genocide.
Within nearly two years, Israel has killed at least 65,141 people in Gaza, mainly women and children, according to the latest figure by the local health ministry.
However, a recent report by Scientists Dr Gideon Polya and Professor Richard Hil said the figure is believed to be at least 680,000.
