‘Felt betrayed’: Steve Witkoff, Jared Kushner recall Israeli strike on Qatar; led Gaza peace negotiations for Donald Trump

Two of US President Donald Trump’s key negotiators in brokering the Israel-Hamas ceasefire have said they felt “betrayed” by Israel following a strike targeting Hamas leadership in Doha, the capital of fellow US ally Qatar, in September.Special Envoy to the Middle East Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner, Trump’s son-in-law, made the disclosure on CBS News show “60 Minutes.” “I came to know about it the next morning,” Witkoff told correspondent Lesley Stahl.“I think both Jared and I felt… I just feel we felt a little bit betrayed. It had a metastasizing effect (to spread and worsen the situation) because the Qataris were critical to the negotiation, as were the Egyptians and the Turks. We had lost the confidence of the Qataris. And so Hamas went underground, and it was very, very difficult to get to them,” he added.Kushner, who is married to Ivanka Trump and whose father, Charles is the Donald Trump-appointed US ambassador to France, was asked about the president’s reaction to Israel’s attack.“I think he felt like the Israelis were getting a little bit out of control in what they were doing, and that it was time to be very strong and stop them from doing things that he felt were not in their long-term interests,” Kushner replied.Israel conducted the strike on September 9. “This was a decision made by Prime Minister Netanyahu, it was not a decision made by me,” Trump posted on social media.Later that month, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was made to “apologise” from the White House to his Qatari counterpart, Mohammed bin Abdulrahman bin Jassim Al Thani.