Hamas has reportedly expressed willingness–with conditions attached–to release some of the more than 200 Israeli hostages it is holding in Gaza, after negotiations with officials from Israel, the U.S. and a third country that has surfaced as a key go-between: Qatar, the tiny Gulf kingdom where Hamas’s leadership is based.
It’s a familiar role for Qatar. The kingdom has used its financial resources and a unique approach to foreign policy–it has close relations with the U.S., Hamas and the Taliban–to win concessions from warring parties.
In an illustration of Qatar’s role over the past week, the kingdom was one of Secretary of State Antony Blinken’s stops on his whirlwind tour of the Middle East; and just a few days later, Iran’s foreign minister visited for talks with a Hamas leader.
Qatar’s ties to Hamas give it unusual influence, but those ties are also putting Qatar under unusual scrutiny in the aftermath of Hamas’s brutal October 7 attack against Israel.
“To some, the Qataris are regional arsonists; to others, they are the fire department,” Mideast analyst Steve Cook wrote in Foreign Policy.
Now, as Gaza and the region descend into chaos, even the Middle East’s ultimate dealmaker may have trouble pulling it back from the brink.
Home to a U.S. base – and Hamas headquarters
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- Hamas is Holding Between 199 and 250 Hostages: Here’s What We Know About Them
Qatar is a land of strange bedfellows. It hosts Al Udeid Air Base, the largest U.S. military facility in the Middle East and is a major purchaser of American arms. It’s also where Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh and the group’s senior political leadership have their headquarters. And for years, during the U.S. war in Afghanistan, it hosted the political office of the Taliban.
“They're very much tied to the American security architecture in the Middle East, but at the same time, they have a very strong Arab and Islamic identity,” Nader Hashemi, a professor of Middle East politics at Georgetown University, told The Messenger.
“The senior leaders of Qatar have tried to play something of a middleman role," he added, "working with the West but also supporting popular movements and grievances that have a lot of cachet on the street in the Arab and Islamic world.”
Qatar is a member of the six-member Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC), which includes regional power players Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, but Qatar has also irked its neighbors by maintaining friendly relations with Iran and backing Islamist movements through the region. The other Gulf nations were particularly incensed by the favorable coverage the influential Qatari-based and funded TV network Al Jazeera gave to protests during the 2011 Arab Spring. Saudi Arabia and several other regional countries attempted to punish Qatar with an economic blockade it from 2017 to 2021, but relations have since improved.
This independent streak, along with its abundant natural gas wealth, has often given Qatar the ability to play mediator, and the government has enthusiastically embraced this role. Over the years, the Qatar government has reportedly spent millions hosting officials and rebels from war-torn places including Darfur, Libya, and Yemen for peace talks in its luxury hotels.
The U.S. has taken frequent advantage of the Qatari channel. Qatar hosted talks between the U.S. and Taliban that led to what became known as the Doha Agreement, which set in motion the U.S. military’s departure from Afghanistan.
More recently, Qatar helped negotiate the prisoner swap that led to the release of six U.S. citizens from Iranian prisons, and agreed to control the dispersal of the $6 billion in oil revenue that Iran gained access to as part of that deal. (Last week, the U.S. and Qatar quietly agreed to cut Iran off from those funds due to its support for Hamas.)
Qatar’s mediator role is not limited to the Middle East. This week, Qatar brokered a deal under which Russia agreed to return four Ukrainian children to their families.
On the frontlines in Gaza
Compared to other Arab states, Qatar used to have friendly relations with Israel. There was even an Israeli trade office in Doha until Qatar shut it down over Israel’s 2009 war with Gaza. Since then, there have been no formal diplomatic ties between the two countries, and Qatar declined to participate in the so-called “Abraham Accords,” a series of U.S.-backed diplomatic normalization deals between several Arab countries and the Jewish state. But Qatar and Israel are thought to maintain extensive off-the-record contacts.
Hamas leaders moved their political headquarters from Syria to Qatar in 2012. Qatar’s decision to host Hamas was quietly supported by the U.S., which wanted a back channel to the group, and preferred having it in a relatively friendly country. That same year, Qatar’s leader, Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa al-Thani, became the first head of state to visit Gaza since Hamas took over the enclave in 2007.
Qatar denies being a financial backer of Hamas, but it does spend tens of millions of dollars per month on aid to Gaza, including paying the salary of civil servants in the Hamas-controlled government. Israel has allowed these payments. At one point in 2018, a representative of the Qatari government delivered $15 million in cash in three suitcases over the border between Israel and Gaza.
Qatar has often acted as a mediator in conflicts involving Hamas, both with its Palestinian rivals and during several previous conflicts with Israel.
Helping or hurting?
The events of the past two weeks have raised questions about whether Qatar is simply keeping lines of communication open with the group, or enabling its violence.
There was heavy criticism of America’s longtime military partner in Washington after Qatar released a statement on Oct. 7 holding Israel “solely responsible for the ongoing escalation due to its ongoing violations of the rights of the Palestinian people.”
“I want to see President Biden go after our allies that we have, like the Qataris…and extradite these Hamas terrorists,” Rep. Max Miller (R-OH) told reporters, referring to the Hamas officials based in the country. “We know that they are there. And I would like to see that happen in a very forceful way.”
Rich Goldberg, a former Trump administration official, compared the Qataris’ role to that of the Swiss banks that aided the Nazis during the Holocaust.
For now, however, the Biden administration doesn't seem to be making any dramatic moves when it comes to Qatar–suggesting the U.S. sees the kingdom’s value as an interlocutor in the hostage talks and Gaza’s humanitarian crisis as too important to disrupt.
Asked whether the U.S. was re-evaluating its relations with the country last week, State Department spokesperson Matt Miller said, “We actually think that they are playing a productive role here and will continue to be partners of the United States. We are asking Qatar, as we are asking every country, to use any influence that they have to keep other parties from coming into this conflict and to secure the release of hostages.”
Even after the horrors of October 7, Israel likely wants Qatar to “maintain its current position, because it needs Qatar to get the hostages out, no one else can do that,” Georgetown’s Hashemi said. “Having that option removed from the political equation doesn't really help Israel or the United States.”
That may change if Israel really follows through on its mission to wipe out Hamas. But for now, Qatar’s unique balancing act looks likely to continue.