Sen. Steve Daines, R-Mont., is traveling to Israel following the Jewish state’s strike in Qatar, a strike he argued was part of Israel’s ‘singular purpose’ to eradicate Hamas.
The Israel Defense Force (IDF) announced the strike, which was intended to target senior-level leadership in Hamas, on Tuesday. However, the attack took place over 1,300 miles away in Doha, Qatar.
The Qatari government has been a key player at the negotiation table in the quest for a ceasefire and return of hostages in the ongoing conflict between Israel and the terrorist organization Hamas following the group’s brutal attack on Oct. 7, 2023. Israel’s targets were top negotiators in Hamas’ political bureau, who were mulling the latest U.S. ceasefire proposal.
So far, Qatari officials have condemned the strike, and the White House has taken a rare step against Israel in the aftermath.
Daines, who is a member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, likened Hamas to ‘a cancer’ that Israel needed to eradicate. He put the Jewish state’s situation into perspective of, if the U.S. were in Israel’s position and ‘1,200 innocent Americans [were] slaughtered by terrorists 40 miles from Washington, D.C.,’ then the ‘United States would do everything within its power to eradicate the threat.’
‘The Israelis, as we’ve seen, whether it’s with Iran or Hezbollah, sometimes doesn’t matter where these leaders are,’ he told Fox News Digital. ‘They’re going to come after them, not unlike the United States did when we went after Usama bin Laden in Pakistan. We didn’t ask Pakistan for permission.’
Following the attack, President Donald Trump told reporters that he was ‘not thrilled’ about the situation.
‘I was very unhappy about it, very unhappy about every aspect. And we got to get the hostages back, but I was very unhappy about the way that went down,’ Trump said.
The Qatari Foreign Ministry condemned the attack and panned Israel’s move as a ‘criminal attack’ that constituted ‘a flagrant violation of all international laws and norms and a serious threat to the security and safety of Qataris and residents of Qatar.’
Daines’ plan to head to the Jewish state came before the strike and was initially meant to celebrate the excavation of ancient stone steps and a pathway, known as the Pilgrimage Road, which Jesus is believed to have walked, leading from the Pool of Siloam to the Temple Mount.
The lawmaker previously went to Israel to commemorate progress of the ongoing archaeological dig in 2023, a couple of months before Hamas’ blitz on Israel.
Now, his planned trip, where Secretary of State Marco Rubio and U.S. Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee are expected to attend, is likely to take a different tenor.
Daines said he had just spoken with the Israeli Ambassador to the U.S. on Monday and hoped that his schedule could line up for a meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. He also noted that he had yet to see an assessment of the strike, which hit a residential complex in Doha.
When asked if he was worried that the strike could derail ceasefire talks, Daines noted that he had appreciated Qatar’s cooperation and pointed out the U.S. has its largest military base in the Middle East there. But, he added that ‘Hamas, clearly, is trying to evade the reach of the Israeli government.’
‘And as we say, ‘Sometimes you can run, but you can’t hide,’ and Israel had to make a decision, knowing that, like they did with Iran, where they took out military leadership, they took out their nuclear scientists, because they could not allow Iran to get into their bomb,’ Daines said.
‘Similarly, with Hamas, they would have to take out their command and control structure, leadership. And they have a singular mission, and Israel will do what it needs to do to protect herself,’ he continued.
Fox News Digital reached out to the State Department for comment but did not immediately hear back.
Fox News’ Greg Norman contributed to this report.