Qatar still hosts Hamas’s top brass, one year after they were targeted

One year ago today, Hamas officials in Qatar narrowly escaped death. On September 9, 2025, Israel launched an airstrike on a Hamas meeting in Doha. The strike failed to wipe out Hamas’s upper ranks. But it was an explosion that rocked the Middle East. It brought the Persian Gulf into the war. And it blew apart the pretense that Qatar had been a neutral arbiter since October 7, 2023. 

Among the Hamas officials targeted in the Israeli strike were the group’s then-Gaza chief, Khalil al-Hayya, and senior politburo members Mohammed Darwish and Mousa Abu Marzouk. This trio has resided in Qatar since the group established a terrorist headquarters there in 2012. It’s time for America to demand their extradition.

For more than a decade now, the Qataris have played the roles of arsonists and firefighters in the Middle East. The regime is a top financial and political patron for Hamas. And then, when conflict erupts (as it has in 2008, 2012, 2014, 2021 and 2023), the Qataris swoop in to negotiate. For reasons that never quite made sense, the United States government has allowed for this insane arrangement to continue.

Admittedly, there was a moment in 2024 when it looked like Qatar was prepared to expel Hamas officials at the Biden administration’s request. But that was not to be. Somehow, Qatar convinced Washington (and Israel) that its sponsorship of the terrorist group granted it leverage in the effort to get the Israeli hostages out of Gaza. As it turns out, it was only the Israeli strike last year that convinced Doha to finally demand their release.

The most obvious candidate for extradition is Khaled Meshal, who is facing federal terrorism, murder conspiracy, and sanctions evasion charges in the United States. Meshal has resided in Qatar since 2012, serving first as Hamas’s political chief before becoming the group’s de facto foreign minister in 2021. The U.S. Treasury Department designated Meshal in 2003 for “supervising assassination operations, bombings and the killing of Israeli settlers.” He was also an architect of the October 7, 2023, mass slaughter in Israel.

Al-Hayya has been a member of Hamas since its founding in 1987. In July, Hamas elected him the head of its political bureau. He succeeded 10/7 mastermind Yahya Sinwar, who was killed in Gaza in October 2024. Al-Hayya played a central role in planning the October 7 massacre. Documents recovered in Gaza indicate that he liaised with a senior Iranian commander in Lebanon in July 2023 to solicit help during “the first hour” of Hamas’s October assault.

Mousa Abu Marzouk, another founding member of Hamas, settled in Qatar in 2012. In 2004, a federal grand jury indicted Marzouk and two co-defendants for helping to “illegally finance terrorist activities in Israel, the West Bank and the Gaza Strip.” At the time, the U.S. government considered Marzouk, who was then based in Syria, to be “a fugitive from justice.” 

Hamas spokesman Ghazi Hamad and Muhammad Darwish, the head of Hamas’s consultative Shura Council, are also good candidates for extradition. Both are senior figures in Hamas’s decision-making apparatus. Similarly, Husam Badran is a longtime Hamas politburo member based in Qatar. He allegedly oversaw multiple suicide bombings in Israel, including one in 2001that claimed the life of an American citizen. He then spent nearly a decade in Israeli prison before he was released in 2011.

The U.S. doesn’t have an extradition treaty with Qatar, which means that Doha isn’t legally obliged. Diplomatically, however, the move is a no-brainer. Qatar is a Major Non-NATO Ally and has cooperated with U.S. authorities before to apprehend traffickers and fraudsters. Failure to cooperate with authorities this time would confirm what skeptics of Qatar have long suspected — that the emirate is a Hamas patron, not an impartial negotiator.  

The Trump administration has made meaningful progress in Gaza. If Washington is serious about advancing its 20-point plan for Gaza, it should press Qatar — a sitting member of the Gaza Board of Peace — to extradite these figures. 

And the list should widen. U.S. authorities should also investigate the crimes and current whereabouts of Hamas officials like Nizar Awadallah, Izzat al-Rishq, and Sami Abu Zuhri. All are believed to have transited through Qatar. They may be laying low there right now.

The regime in Qatar will undoubtedly oppose such a move from Washington. But this a move that the White House needs to make. One year after the failed Israeli strike on Qatar, Hamas continues to operate with impunity there. When the group finally begins to understand that its immunity is gone, Washington can finally help broker and end to this war. That end is long overdue. 

Jonathan Schanzer is executive director of Foundation for Defense of Democracies where Natalie Ecanow is a senior research analyst. Follow Jonathan on X @JSchanzer and Natalie @NatalieEcanow.