Qatar would have been forgiven for thinking it was immune from Israeli attack.
The tiny Gulf state is a key US ally that welcomed President Donald Trump just four months ago; red carpets were laid, billion-dollar deals were done and a controversial presidential aircraft bequeathed.
As for its role as mediator to end the war in Gaza, Qatar’s Prime Minister Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman bin Jassim Al Thani personally met with Hamas’ chief negotiator Khalil Al-Hayya on Monday to push for the new US-led ceasefire and hostage deal. Hamas’ response was expected at a follow-up meeting Tuesday evening; a couple of hours before that answer, Israeli jets struck a residential building in Doha, killing five Hamas members and a Qatari security official.
The sense of shock and betrayal is palpable in the Qatari capital. The vocabulary being used by Qatar’s prime minister is strong, evocative and damning, a departure from his usual composed response to the incessant twists and turns of trying to end the 23-month war in Gaza.
In an interview with CNN’s Becky Anderson Wednesday, he described the attack as “state terror” and warned the Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had “killed any hope” for the hostages and undermined “any chance of peace.” He also said the Israeli leader must be “brought to justice,” accusing him of breaking “every international law.”
A country with no diplomatic ties to Israel invited its delegations to come and negotiate indirectly with Hamas; an endeavor appreciated by President Trump, who spoke of Doha “bravely taking risks with us to broker peace.”
Qatar is also considered to have taken a hit on America’s behalf when Iran struck the Al Udeid military base in June of this year, the largest US military facility in the region. Tehran said it was in response to US strikes on its nuclear facilities. Doha issued strong condemnation but little more.
Questioning the pivot to America
The message taken from this strike does not end at Qatar’s borders. Nations across the Gulf, who for decades have actively pivoted toward the US, politically and financially, may now be questioning the assumed benefits of that choice.
US security guarantees were implicit in deals done and memoranda signed. Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the UAE pledged an eye-watering $3 trillion in deals during Trump’s May visit, their side of the deal upheld.
US President Donald Trump, shown in Doha, Qatar, on May 14, was “very unhappy” with Israel’s strikes against the Gulf state, which has been a key player in negotiations for a ceasefire in Gaza. – Brian Snyder/Reuters
“I think those nations will be wondering what they can do in order to deter future attacks,” said HA Hellyer, scholar at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, “but also, what sort of security architecture they need to now invest in instead of relying on a partner that hasn’t been able to protect them even from one of its own allies.”
The damage to the trust between the US and its Gulf partners has been done, though to what extent is not yet clear and rests largely on President Trump’s reassurances to his allies and public messaging to Israel. A wider question should be what kind of discouraging effect this will have on future mediation efforts.
While Qatar has not closed the door on mediating peace in Gaza, the talks are at best in limbo, at worst lying in the embers of Israel’s most recent assassination attempt.
Hasan Alhasan, Senior Fellow of Middle East Policy at the International Institute for Strategic Studies, said, “This is the kind of risk not many countries in the region will be willing to stomach in return for a mediating role.”
Qatar and Egypt have long been mediators between Israel and Hamas. Oman has facilitated talks between Iran and the US and more successfully between the US and the Houthis. The UAE has facilitated prisoner swaps between Russia and Ukraine. Saudi Arabia is positioning itself as a venue for peace talks on several different conflicts.
The leaders of every one of those countries will be watching President Trump’s response closely in the face of what appears to be US impotence in the Middle East. And a belief long voiced by many in the region of Israel’s intention to sabotage peace talks has only been fortified by Tuesday’s strikes.
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