(Bloomberg) -- It took just a few hours after Hamas’s assault on Israel for Qatar’s prime minister to assemble a team at an undisclosed location in the...
-- It took just a few hours after Hamas’s assault on Israel for Qatar’s prime minister to assemble a team at an undisclosed location in the capital, Doha. As the images emerged of missile attacks, gun men on motorbikes and hostages seized across the border from Gaza, the Gulf state’s leadership knew what it needed to do.Canada Plans College Crackdown Amid Foreign Student Troubles
“Qatar has wanted to play a useful role for important states for a very long time,” said David Roberts, an associate professor at King’s College London who worked in Qatar and specializes in Middle East security. “It gives Qatar a certain influence on one of the central questions in the Arab world, building up relations with this very important group in Gaza — like it or loathe it.”
“They can’t have it both ways — they can’t say ‘we’re this bridge’ and then show no signs they can actually influence Hamas,” said Dennis Ross, who served as the White House Middle East envoy under President Bill Clinton and is now a senior adviser at WestExec Advisors. “The onus is on them to get more hostages out. Qatar needs to deliver something here.”
Getting the first four hostages safely out of Gaza was intensified by bombs killing civilians and opposing sides making provocative statements and threatening to derail progress, according to the person briefed. A country smaller than Connecticut, Qatar survived a near three-year boycott by its Gulf neighbors, led by Saudi Arabia. They severed ties and transportation links, accusing Doha of supporting extremist groups and cozying up to Iran. Qatar, which described the action as an illegal siege, denied the charges.
“The centrality of foreign policy in Qatari thinking cannot be ignored,” said Bader Al-Saif, an assistant professor at Kuwait University and a non-resident fellow at the Arab Gulf States Institute in Washington. “It has led to an enhanced Qatari ‘mediation product’ that has proven invaluable to much of the crises of the past years. More is expected from it in connection to Gaza.”
For Qatar, its utility at a moment of maximum geopolitical risk is also a reflection of its leadership. “Qatar views this role as part of its national security,” said Al-Saif at Kuwait University. “A secure region is in the interest of all, especially small states with the ability to successfully play an outsized role like Qatar has been doing.”
Yet despite the criticism of Qatar, not least for its connections with Hamas, there’s still no alternative at the moment. That could change, according to Kristin Diwan, senior resident scholar at the Arab Gulf States Institute in Washington.
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