Leading Hamas Official Targeted In Israel’s Qatar Strike Appears Alive & Well On Al Jazeera

A top Hamas official who was directly targeted by Israel during its September 9 strike on a residential compound in Doha, Qatar has appeared on Al Jazeera for the first time since surviving the attack.

Ghazi Hamad was one of the prime targets of the assassination attempt last week, but he appeared alive and well during the Al Jazeera broadcast on Wednesday evening. 

“Hamad is the second Hamas official to be interviewed since the strike, following a similar interview earlier this week with Taher al-Nunu, who was not among the targets,” writes Newsmax.

Hamad in his fresh remarks paints a picture of being lured to the Doha compound specifically to consider a new US-backed peace proposal for Gaza, describing of his entourage, “We were sitting to discuss the American proposal to end the war. Less than an hour later, we heard explosions and immediately realized it was an assassination attempt.”

He continued, “As residents of Gaza, we recognize these sounds. We tried to flee the area as quickly as possible – and we succeeded.” According to more:

“The rockets came down consecutively, without a pause, around 12 missiles in less than a minute,” he added, saying the group “learned with complete certainty that it is an Israeli attack”.

Some officials, and even Israeli media reports, have called the risky strike a ‘failure’. Though five Hamas officials (and a Qatari security guard) were killed, there are reports that Netanyahu’s intelligence officials fiercely opposed the plan – and that they didn’t get their main targets.

Ghazi Hamad, a top Hamas official, appeared on Wednesday in a live interview broadcast by Al Jazeera, in the first appearance by a Hamas leader since the Israeli attack on Doha on 9 September. pic.twitter.com/BjWnNY16nk

— Middle East Eye (@MiddleEastEye) September 18, 2025

Instead of a more localized covert operation, Israeli jets had fired long-range missiles all the way from the Red Sea:

As Israeli war planners plotted a secret strike on Hamas political leaders in Qatar, they chose a plan that enabled them to attack quickly and limited the opportunity for the U.S. to object.  

The operation, which was carried out Tuesday, relied on warplanes that fired long range missiles, avoided the airspace of Arab countries and left the Trump administration in the dark until the last moments.

Israeli jet fighters, eight F-15s and four F-35s, flew to the Red Sea, on the opposite side of the Arabian Peninsula from Qatar. From there, some of the planes fired the air-launched ballistic missiles into space over Saudi Arabia at Doha, several U.S. officials said.

Israeli media has also suggested that the force of the warheads on the missiles were intentionally limited, to prevent civilians deaths and not anger Qatar too much, allowing other targeted leaders like Hamad to survive. 

Trump has been expressing anger at the Israeli government over the attack on US ally Qatar, but some have said he could be feigning frustration, and that the US may have actually greenlighted it…

Raging Trump ‘declared Netanyahu “is f***ing me” after Israel carried out Qatar attack’ and ‘is very frustrated by his handling of Gaza’https://t.co/HOEZBM6R2U via @DailyMail

— EndGameWW3 🇺🇸 (@EndGameWW3) September 18, 2025

Interestingly, Hamad also said in the interview that “We are not afraid of Trump’s threats to unleash hell upon us” – and that “We do not take orders from him on how to treat enemy prisoners. We treat them according to our own methods.” and according to our religion.”