Qatar won’t join neighbours in establishing ties with Israel

DOHA: Qatar won’t join Gulf Arab neighbours in establishing diplomatic relations with Israel until its conflict with the Palestinians is resolved, the Qatari assistant foreign minister said.

Lulwa al-Khater also suggested in an interview on Monday that there may soon be progress toward ending a three-year-old boycott of her country by regional states.

Al-Khater spoke to Bloomberg a day before Israel and the United Arab Emirates were to sign the first treaty between a Gulf Arab nation and the majority-Jewish state. On Friday, Bahrain announced that it, too, would normalise relations with Israel, to the dismay of the Palestinians, who see the alliances as a betrayal of their statehood cause.

“We don’t think that normalisation was the core of this conflict and hence, it can’t be the answer,” al-Khater said.

“The core of this conflict is about the drastic conditions that the Palestinians are living under as a people without a country, living under occupation.”

A common distrust of Iran has propelled the new alliances as regional constellations shift.

For the past three years, Qatar has been the target of a diplomatic and commercial boycott by Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Bahrain and Egypt, in part over what they see as Qatar’s cozy relations with the Islamic Republic.

The rift has frustrated President Donald Trump’s efforts to form a united front against Iran in the Gulf, and a new round of US-led mediation was launched two months ago.

The efforts, backed by Kuwait, haven’t yet reached a tipping point, al-Khater said.

“In the past couple of months, there have been messages and messengers going back and forth,” she said.

It’s very early to talk about a real breakthroughbut the coming few weeks might reveal something new,” she added.