As Israel and Hamas sink deeper into battle, Doha unearths itself in a gentle place. As a long-standing backer of the Muslim Brotherhood, Qatar has large affect over the motion’s Palestinian associate, Hamas. That provides a vital alternative within the brief run. Doha’s deep connections with the Gaza-based Islamist crew make Qatar a central participant within the present diplomatic sport. However for precisely the similar reason why, Doha faces the looming possibility of being known as to account over its file of make stronger for such radical Islamist teams, and particularly for Hamas.
Doha has an extended historical past of serving as a dealer, and previously, this has frequently labored neatly for the Gulf state. By way of permitting the Taliban to determine a Doha administrative center, Qatar supplied the U.S. with a channel for negotiations with the gang. Doha thus facilitated the settlement to withdraw U.S. forces from Afghanistan concluded underneath the Trump management and performed by way of President Joe Biden in 2021.
Qatar hopes to play a equivalent position now. Doha has supplied a house for far of Hamas’s exiled political bureau, together with its de facto chief, Ismail Haniyeh. Qatar has additionally been a significant underwriter of Gaza’s financial system ever since Hamas seized keep an eye on of the realm, in 2007. With the consent of Hamas’s adversaries—together with the Fatah-dominated Palestinian Authority, america, or even Israel—Qatar has contributed masses of tens of millions of bucks every 12 months to the enclave. Amongst different issues, that money lined the payroll for presidency staff, which put meals at the desk for a a very powerful collection of Gazan households regardless of a digital blockade by way of Israel and Egypt.
On the similar time, Qatar has lengthy been a key U.S. spouse within the Heart East. And sooner than the Abraham Accords, which normalized Israel’s members of the family with a few of Qatar’s Gulf Arab neighbors, the primary Israeli diplomatic presence within the area used to be a business administrative center in Doha that operated for a number of years within the overdue Nineties. Within the provide disaster, neither Egypt nor Turkey has displayed enthusiasm for appearing as a go-between with Hamas. So Qatar is attempting to deal with its privileged place of being an invaluable interlocutor to each side.
However that diplomatic merit would possibly end up short-lived. After the hostage state of affairs concludes—whether or not it leads to tragedy or with negotiated releases involving imaginable prisoner swaps—Qatar is more likely to face critical power and grievance. On account of the brutality of its assault on southern Israel, Hamas has forfeited even the pragmatic acceptance it previously had amongst Western nations, which now broadly view the gang as an excessive 15 may organization comparable to al-Qaeda and ISIS.
Qatar’s dalliance with Islamist teams has lengthy been the main way for Doha to mission affect within the Arab global, in particular via state make stronger for Al Jazeera Arabic. After 2011, Qatar got here to imagine, and Al Jazeera Arabic hopefully predicted, {that a} wave of Islamist governance would sweep in with new Arab democracies. As an alternative, the elected Brotherhood executive in Egypt proved much more unpopular than the Hosni Mubarak dictatorship. Islamists misplaced elections in Libya and Tunisia. In Syria, the Brotherhood used to be decreased to the margins.
With the Brotherhood’s decline in status and gear, Qatar’s wager has yielded treasured few returns. And now Hamas’s disastrous rebranding in Western eyes may just neatly power a reckoning with Doha’s irresponsible technique. The Qataris could also be compelled to make a choice from their treasured ties to Washington and their lengthy funding in Hamas. American power may just even push Qatar to expel the Hamas leaders and cadres dwelling in Doha.
However Qatar nonetheless holds one trump card: its connection to the Pentagon. All the way through the regional dispute that started in 2017 and ended in a three-year boycott of Qatar by way of Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Bahrain, and Egypt, President Donald Trump to begin with accused Doha of financing terrorism. However the Division of Protection noticed issues very otherwise: Qatar’s Al Udeid Air Base, which is house to the ahead headquarters of U.S. Central Command, used to be the hub for the campaigns in Iraq and Afghanistan. Sooner or later, the Pentagon’s viewpoint prevailed, and the U.S. pressed for an finish to the boycott.
Qatar’s leverage is easy. The rustic financed the construction of, and in large part price range the upkeep of, the bottom at Al Udeid, but it agreed to permit the U.S. to perform the ability underneath de facto extraterritorial jurisdiction—as though Al Udeid had been sovereign American territory and now not Qatari. Small marvel, then, that the Protection Division regards this as an irreplaceable asset, strategically necessary for U.S. pursuits.
Within the possible reckoning, Doha will once more depend on this indispensability to keep away from responsibility. However after Hamas’s scary killing spree in southern Israel, even that might not be sufficient. And it’s going to now not lend a hand Qatar’s case that its reliable observation after the October 7 assault on Israel put the entire blame for the bloodshed on Israel and didn’t criticize Hamas. This used to be in stark distinction to nearly the entire different Gulf Arab nations.
In the end, Qatar may just if truth be told have the benefit of being pressured to desert a failed regional coverage of backing spiritual and populist radicals that, like Hamas, have proved to be reckless allies prepared to include political violence. Different regional powers—significantly Turkey and Iran—have made extremely efficient use of overseas proxies, however they’ve achieved so by way of exerting way more direct keep an eye on than Qatar has tried or may just workout over the Brotherhood-aligned actions. For too lengthy, Doha has danced between its Islamist allies and its Western and Arab companions. The track simply stopped.