Sovereignty Under Fire: The Illegality of Israel’s 9 September 2025 Airstrike on Qatar Under International Law

Submitted: 11 September 2025
Accepted: 09 December 2025

DOI: https://doi.org/10.70139/rolacc.2025.2.4

Abdullah Hemmet Abdullah
Associate Professor of Islamic Thought and Civilization & International Law
Islamic University of Minnesota, USA and Islamic University Gaza, Palestine
ahemmet@iugaza.edu.ps, hemmet.abdullah@hotmail.com
ORCID ID: https://orcid.org/0009-0001-6650-9788

ABSTRACT
On 9 September 2025, Israeli fighter jets conducted an airstrike on a residential compound in the Leqtaifiya district of Doha, Qatar, targeting senior members of Hamas’s political leadership who were reportedly engaged in negotiations over a United States—brokered ceasefire proposal to end the ongoing war in Gaza. The attack, which killed several individuals including a Qatari Internal Security officer, represents the first overt Israeli military operation on Qatari territory. This incident immediately raised serious legal and political questions regarding its compatibility with the United Nations (UN) Charter and the broader international legal order. The article seeks to determine whether the Doha airstrike was lawful under jus ad bellum (the law governing the resort to force) and jus in bello (international humanitarian law), to assess whether it may be characterised as an unlawful use of force or act of aggression, and to examine its implications for the law of neutrality, the protection of mediators and negotiation venues, and the accountability of states for internationally wrongful acts. Employing a doctrinal legal methodology, the study analyses the UN Charter, relevant International Court of Justice jurisprudence, Additional Protocol I and customary international humanitarian law (IHL), General Assembly Resolution 3314 on the definition of aggression, and the International Law Commission’s Articles on Responsibility of States for Internationally Wrongful Acts, alongside United Nations practice and leading academic commentary on self‑defence, the “unwilling or unable” doctrine, and the extraterritorial use of force against non‑state actors. The analysis concludes that the attack constitutes a prima facie violation of Article 2(4) of the UN Charter and the customary prohibition on the use of force. Israel’s implicit reliance on self‑defence under Article 51 fails to satisfy the requirements of “armed attack”, necessity, proportionality, and the controversial “unwilling or unable” test for operations against non‑state actors located in the territory of third states. In light of General Assembly Resolution 3314 and state practice, the operation can be understood not only as an unlawful use of force but, on a strong reading, as an act of aggression. At the level of jus in bello, the choice to target Hamas leaders in a densely populated diplomatic district of a neutral state raises serious doubts concerning compliance with the principles of distinction, proportionality, and feasible precautions in attack, as codified in Additional Protocol I and reflected in customary IHL, as well as respect for Qatar’s neutrality and the protection owed to civilians and neutral officials. The article argues that the Doha strike breached core rules of the jus ad bellum and jus in bello regimes, undermined emerging norms safeguarding mediators and negotiation venues, disrupted ceasefire efforts, and eroded confidence in the stability of the UN Charter framework. At the same time, the breadth and intensity of international condemnation are interpreted as evidence of the continued normative force of the prohibition on the use of force and of state sovereignty, underscoring the need to reaffirm legal constraints on extraterritorial counterterrorism operations and to strengthen protections for mediation processes in contemporary armed conflicts.

Keywords
Sovereignty; use of force; self-defence; international humanitarian law; aggression; neutrality

© 2025 Abdullah, licensee LU Press. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution license CC BY 4.0, which permits unrestricted use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

Cite this article as: Abdullah A. M. Sovereignty Under Fire: The Illegality of Israel’s 9 September 2025 Airstrike on Qatar Under International Law, Rule of Law and Anti-Corruption Center Journal, 2025:2, https://doi.org/10.70139/rolacc.2025.2.4

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