Emir Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani address to the 80th UN General Assembly, 23 Sep 2025 — after the 9 Sep 2025 Israeli strike on Doha targeting the Hamas negotiating delegation (English translation of Arabic original)

Your Excellency, President of the General Assembly,
Your Excellency, Secretary-General of the United Nations,
Honorable Audience,

May the peace, mercy and blessings of God be upon you,

The United Nations was established eight decades ago on a set of rules and principles reached by humanity after two world wars. These rules are based on maintaining international peace and security, respecting human dignity, states' sovereignty, and their internal affairs, and fostering international cooperation for the welfare of our peoples and humanity at large.

The fallback of this international order in favor of the logic of power means paving the way for the law of the jungle to prevail — where the concepts of law and justice become an irrelevant digression, and where those who transgress against others enjoy privileges merely by virtue of their ability to do so.

As you know, on September 9, Doha came under a treacherous attack targeting a meeting of the Hamas negotiating delegation at the residence [… fatalities listed including a Qatari Internal Security Force-Lekhwiya member], while 18 others sustained injuries as a result of this aggression.

This attack was a grave violation of a state's sovereignty, and a blatant, unjustified breach of international norms and conventions. However, the entire world was also shocked by the circumstances of this heinous act, which we branded as state terrorism.

Contrary to the Israeli Prime Minister's claim, this attack does not fall within a supposed right to track down terrorists wherever they may be, but rather constitutes an assault on a mediating, peace-making state whose diplomacy has been devoted to resolving conflicts through peaceful means, and has been making strenuous efforts for two years to achieve a settlement to halt the genocidal war waged against the Palestinian people in the Gaza Strip.

They visit our country while planning to bomb it; they negotiate with delegations while plotting to assassinate their members. It is extremely difficult to deal with this mindset, which does not respect the most basic principles of human interaction. To expect predictable behavior from such actors is almost impossible. **Isn't this the definition of a rogue [state]?**

No party resorts to assassinate the very delegation it is negotiating with unless its goal is to derail the negotiations. For them, negotiations are nothing but a continuation of war by other means, and a way to mislead Israeli public opinion.

If the cost of freeing the Israeli hostages is ending the war, then the Israeli government is abandoning their release. Its real objective is to destroy Gaza — to render housing, livelihoods, education and medical care impossible, stripping away the very foundations of human life, and thus paving the way for the displacement of its population.

This treacherous assault on the sovereignty of a Gulf state thousands of miles away has exposed that the Israeli prime minister, who boasts of having changed the face of the Middle East in the past two years, truly intends to allow Israel to intervene wherever and whenever it wishes. He has a pipe dream of rendering the Arab region as an Israeli sphere of influence.

**Israel is not a democracy in a hostile environment, as its leaders claim. It is, in reality, a state hostile to its environment, complicit in building an apartheid system, and waging a genocidal war.** Its Prime Minister proudly declares before his people that he has blocked the establishment of a Palestinian state, and he promises that such a state will never come into being.

And anyone who objects to this is branded, in its propaganda, as either a terrorist or antisemitic. This is what public opinion — even in countries allied with Israel — has come to recognize and reject. Today, we are witnessing the inception of a global solidarity movement, reminiscent of the international campaign against apartheid in the last century.

We are firmly convinced that peace cannot be achieved in our region if the international community, mainly the Security Council, does not take a firm stance to shifting from following the occupation's attempts of [exhausting territories] and allowing the Palestinian people to exercise their right to self-determination and establish their independent state with East Jerusalem as its Capital on the 1967 borders, in accordance with the resolutions of the international legitimacy and the two-state solution.

Sisterly Syria has, since late last year, entered a new phase that we hope will be the beginning of a path toward realizing the aspirations of the Syrian people for stability, development, and the rule of law, after a dark chapter in their country's history.

Our sisterly Lebanon has also witnessed positive developments with the election of General Joseph Aoun as President of the Republic and the appointment of HE Dr. Nawaf Salam as Prime Minister — this represents a significant step toward stability in the country.

The State of Qatar, mindful of the gravity of the challenges confronting the international community, reaffirms that it will remain faithful to its commitments to championing truth, building bridges of peace, and promoting justice in international relations.

Thank you. May the peace, mercy and blessings of God be upon you.