AMAC Exclusive – By Ben Solis
While mainstream publications have extensively documented Iran’s role in funding Hamas’s war against Israel, most media outlets have largely ignored the role of Qatar, a small yet influential country, in fueling the violence.
With a population of 2.66 million people and a land area of just 4,468 square miles – slightly smaller than Connecticut – Qatar is often forgotten in discussions of Middle East geopolitics. But with extensive energy reserves, it clocks in as the world’s 5th-richest country in terms of GDP per capita and is home to futuristic skyscrapers and mesmerizing architecture.
Despite the country’s history of sympathies for Islamic terrorist groups, the United States has generally worked to maintain ties with Qatar as an intermediary for negotiations with Iran. The most extensive U.S. Air Force base in the world, which hosts the 379th Air Expeditionary Wing with more than 100 aircraft, is located a few miles south of the capital of Doha.
This relationship has become particularly important for the Biden administration as the White House continues to press forward with its plans to revive the Obama-era Iran nuclear deal.
However, Hamas’s brutal attack on Israel on October 7 has placed added scrutiny on Qatar’s role in facilitating the violence.
Qatar has a long history of stoking tensions between Israelis and Palestinians. Last summer, a major Qatari newspaper which publishes in Arabic denounced Arab leaders who promoted harmony between Jews and Palestinians, falsely claiming that Israel wants to force Muslims to abandon Islam.
Just a few months prior to that, Al-Watan, another Qatari newspaper, incited violence against Israel by publishing a Palestinian author who called on Islamic nations to target “every part” of Israel, claiming that the Israelis stole the land and expelled the original owners.
All media outlets in Qatar are controlled by the ruling clan of Tamim bin Hamad al Thani, the current Emir of Qatar, who runs a fundamentalist Islamic system governed by Sharia law. “[The government] does not distinguish between ‘laity’ and ‘ecclesiastical body’ and promotes a disaffecting, antagonizing, and inherently conflicted worldview,” Professor Bernard Lewis, an eminent Islam specialist, told me in an interview in 2010, three years before al Thani took the reins.
There are some indications that Qatar has not only encouraged violence against Israel, but may have even provided some material support to Hamas in furtherance of its terrorist activities.
Days before Hamas’s attack began, Qatar offered sanctuary to several Hamas leaders, including Ismail Haniyeh, the senior political leader of Hamas. Qatar has been home to Hamas’s political bureau for years, and has joined Iran and Saudi Arabia in publicly blaming Israel for Hamas’s attack.
Shortly after the attacks began, MEMRI, a think tank specializing in Middle Eastern politics, released a video showing Haniyeh and other Hamas leaders in Qatar performing a “prostration of gratitude” for the slaughter of more than 1,000 innocent people. “Qatar is Hamas, and Hamas is Qatar,” MEMRI founder and president Dr. Yigal Carmon told this author. “Every missile, inch of tunnel, drone, motorcycle, weapon, and bullet is paid for with Qatari money,” he added.
Qatari leaders have volunteered to mediate the Israel-Hamas conflict, but one prominent Arab observer I spoke with called this merely a cover for “harboring Hamas leaders who took part in planning the attack.”
The Qatari media has since continued to express complete support for Hamas and open glee over the death of Israeli civilians.
Two cartoons published by Qatari-owned media outlets are indicative of this heinous attitude toward Israel. In one, Gaza is depicted as a concentration camp that Israel created to torture Palestinians. In another, entitled “collective destruction,” the artist accuses Israel of genocide.
Alberto M. Gonzales, a vice president of MEMRI, told me that the hatred toward Israel in Qatar was bolstered in large part by the country’s harboring of Egyptian cleric Yūsuf Abdallah al-Qaraḍāwī, one of the most outspoken anti-Israel voices in recent memory who built a media empire inside Qatar.
Al-Qaraḍāwī, who died last year, was exiled from Egypt in 1961 to the then-unaffluent country of Qatar. He openly supported suicide bombings against Israel and repeatedly said that Muslims must unite to fight for Palestine, a battle he portrayed as a religious war. He was notably a significant influence in the life of Ismail Haniyeh.
Al-Qaraḍāwī first rose to prominence as a popular host of the “Sharia and Life” show on the al-Jazeera TV network. In 2010, Qatar-sponsored groups, together with the Hamas government, began promoting Al-Qaraḍāwī as a role model for Palestinian and Qatari youth.
From studios in Doha, Al-Qaraḍāwī would transmit his approval of Hitler’s crimes against the Jews, calling the Holocaust “a divine punishment” that “Jews exaggerated.” On one occasion, he added that, “Allah willing,” this judgment, “the next time will be at the hand of the believers [Muslims].”
This toxic hatred has now become an intrinsic part of Qatari and Hamas youth culture. “These groups headed by Hamas and the Islamic Jihad adopted this hatred of the Jews,” Professor Shaul Bartal from Bar-Ilan University in Tel Aviv told me. “According to this outlook, the Jews are the enemies of God and the Islamic faith.”
“I fear Palestinian youth being corrupted and indoctrinated by this culture of violence,” Palestinian political analyst Bassem Eid added. “Institutions promoting these ideals must be abolished throughout the world for there to be any hope for a rising generation to embrace peace and prosperity.”
Yet individuals like Al-Qaraḍāwī and Ismail Haniyeh are exactly who the Qatari regime has continued to harbor and promote. Far from working to ease tensions, Qatar has been ratcheting them up.
The Biden administration for their part has been willing to turn a blind eye, desperate to keep their misguided dreams of an Iran nuclear deal alive. But the Israelis and the prospect for Middle East peace more broadly are paying a hefty price for this decision.
Ben Solis is the pen name of an international affairs journalist, historian, and researcher.
