QATAR'S ROLE AS MEDIATOR BETWEEN HAMAS AND ISRAEL IS CRUCIAL

Acting asa back channel mediator for many US administrations has enabled Qatar to play a key role on the global stage

- JOHN DOBSON

For such a small country, Qatar packs a big geopolitical punch. Jutting out from the east coast of the Arabian Peninsula into the Persian Gulf, this tiny sovereign state with just 300,000 citizens and 2.7 million expats, has the highest per capita income on the planet, due to its huge oil and natural gas reserves, the world’s third largest. Despite its small size, Qatar’s influence spreads far and wide. During the Arab Spring, the wave of protests and demonstrations across the Middle East and North Africa in 2011, Qatar supported several rebel groups both financially and through its globally expanding media group, Al Jazeera. It therefore came as little surprise that when the Hamas political leaders decided to leave Syria in 2012, due to the unrest in their long-term ally, Qatar was their destination of choice.

Not only did Qatar’s capital Doha provide a safe haven for Hamas leaders, it also helped pay the salaries of tens of thousands of Palestinian teachers, doctors and other public servants in the Gaza Strip, which has been under an Israeli blockade since Hamas wrested control of the territory in 2007. Over the past decade Qatar has sent more than $1 billion to Gaza, sometimes in suitcases stuffed with cash, in other cases as fuel, which the government in Gaza then sold to pay salaries. Qatari officials say that the state does not sponsor or fund Hamas, insisting that its aid to the blockaded strip was coordinated through UN agencies and Israel, with the Israeli government having ‘complete oversight’ of the humanitarian assistance.