Qatari officials are sounding satisfied after a Friday evening dinner at New York with President Trump, where this week’s Israeli air strikes aimed at Hamas officials based in the emirate were expected to have dominated the conversation.

“Great dinner with POTUS. Just ended !” reads a post on X from the deputy chief of mission at Qatar’s embassy at Washington, Hamad Al-Muftah.

The White House confirmed Mr. Trump’s attendance at the dinner, where Qatari Prime Minister Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman al-Thani and Mr. Trump’s special envoy Steve Witkoff were also in attendance. The prime minister met earlier in the day at the White House with Vice President Vance and the secretary of state, Marco Rubio.

The White House provided no details about the dinner conversation. However the New York Sun reported earlier that Mr. Trump was expected to try to persuade Qatar to renew its mediation role between Israel and Hamas and pressure Hamas to release all its hostages, disarm, and leave Gaza.

Qatari officials were enraged when America’s closest ally in the region, Israel, staged air strikes on Tuesday aimed at killing senior Hamas officials who have long enjoyed a safe haven in the country, the venue for on-and-off negotiations aimed at ending the war in Gaza. The attack is reported to have killed five Hamas members and a Qatari security force member but missed the organization’s top leadership.

U.S. officials quickly criticized the attack in a country that hosts America’s largest military base in the Middle East, saying they were not notified by Israel until the attack was already underway.

“Unilaterally bombing inside Qatar, a sovereign nation and close ally of the United States that is working very hard and greatly taking risks with us to broker peace does not advance Israel or America’s goals,” White House spokeswoman Karoline Leavitt told reporters later on Tuesday.

Yet, “notwithstanding the unfortunate nature of this incident, President Trump believes it could serve as an opportunity for peace,” the American acting U.N. ambassador, Dorothy Shea, told the Security Council on Thursday.

While relations between America and Qatar may be unimpaired by the attack, anger in the region remains high, as evidenced by online responses to Mr. Al-Muftah’s posting.

“Shameless fool then has dinner with POTUS. We call people like this puddus!,” reads one comment, posted by “Moamjad72.”

“You think an American airbase in your country did not know about this attack. That will be a joke of the century. The entire Muslim ummah is ashamed of your dismissal of the strikes conducted by a country who is financed by USA,” reads another, posted by “Sumair_ali.”

The Israeli strike and its aftermath have spotlighted the ambiguous role of Qatar, which has harbored Hamas leaders even after the terrorist organization’s October 7, 2002, massacre of some 1,200 Israelis, even while positioning itself as a mediator seeking the release of Hamas’ remaining Israeli hostages.

The emirate has cultivated a close relationship with Mr. Trump, signing multi-billion deals when the president paid a historic visit to the country in May and gifting him with a $400 million Boeing airliner that is being outfitted to serve as Air Force One.

Mr. Trump responded with a promise “to protect this country,” an assurance whose value been questioned in the region in light of the Israeli airstrikes. Speaking with Iran in mind, he said Qatar is “a very special place with a special royal family. … It’s great people and they’re going to be protected by the United States.”

Yet, past statements by Arab officials, as well as Hamas documents and statements seen by the New York Sun, indicate that Qatar’s Islamist surrogates have long striven to weaken America’s Mideast allies and replace modernizing Arab governments with fundamentalist Islamist regimes. 

In addition to Israel’s destruction, Hamas’s goal on October 7, 2023, “was to undermine regimes across the Arab world and to create unrest in several countries where masses rise up against the rulers, and Qatar is supporting that goal,” a senior researcher at the Jerusalem Center for Security and Foreign Affairs, Jonathan Dahoah Halevi, tells the Sun’s Benny Avni.

Prior to September 11, 2001, that attack’s mastermind, Khalid Sheikh Mohammad, found sanctuary in Qatar, the Middle East Media Research Institute’s founder, Yigal Carmon, tells the Sun. MEMRI has published a well-sourced paper documenting KSM’s safe haven at Doha, where he was employed by the Qatari Ministry of Electricity and Water while plotting terror operations around the world.