Qatar maintains balancing act in Israel-Hamas war
JERUSALEM — The gas-rich nation of Qatar has become a key intermediary over the fate of more than 200 hostages held by Hamas militants after their unprecedented attack on Israel, once again putting the small Arabian Peninsula country in the spotlight.
The negotiations have also thrust Qatar into a delicate international balancing act as it maintains a relationship with those viewed as militant groups by the West while trying to preserve its close security ties with the United States.
Under arrangements stemming from past Hamas cease-fire understandings with Israel, the gas-rich emirate of Qatar has paid the salaries of civil servants in the Gaza Strip, provided direct cash transfers to poor families and offered other kinds of humanitarian aid to Palestinians in Gaza.
Qatar has also hosted Hamas’ political office in its capital of Doha for more than a decade. Among officials based there is Khaled Mashaal, an exiled Hamas member who survived a 1997 Israeli assassination attempt in Jordan that threatened to derail that country’s peace deal with Israel. Also there is Ismail Haniyeh, Hamas’ supreme leader.
The U.S. sanctioned Mashaal in 2003 for being “responsible for supervising assassination operations, bombings and the killing of Israeli settlers.” Washington sanctioned Haniyeh in 2018, saying he had “close links with Hamas’ military wing and has been a proponent of armed struggle, including against civilians.”
Mashaal, in an interview with Sky News this week, said hostages taken during Hamas’ attack on Oct. 7 could be released if Israel stops its airstrikes — something incredibly unlikely as Israel prepares for a ground offensive inside the Gaza Strip.
More than 200 people, including foreigners, were believed captured by Hamas during the incursion and taken into Gaza. Four of those have been released, a mother and daughter on Friday and two more on Monday.
“Let them stop this aggression and you will find the mediators like Qatar and Egypt and some Arab countries and others will find a way to have them released and we’ll send them to their homes,” Mashaal said of the hostages.
Hosting the Hamas leaders has brought scrutiny to Qatar, both in the past and since the attack more than two weeks ago that killed more than 1,400 people in Israel.
However, the Biden administration has repeatedly praised Qatar for its efforts in working to free the hostages and U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken visited Doha during his recent shuttle diplomacy trip in the region.
“Qatar is a longtime partner of ours who is responding to our request, because I think they believe that innocent civilians ought to be freed,” State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller said Monday.