Orit Meir, the mother of Almog Meir Jan, speaks to Reuters about her efforts for the safe return of Almog Meir Jan, who was taken hostage by Hamas militants from Gaza while attending the Nova festival in southern Israel, in their family home in Or Yehuda, Israel October 24, 2023.
| Photo Credit: REUTERS

The gas-rich nation of Qatar has become a key intermediary over the fate of some 200 hostages held by Hamas militants after their unprecedented attack on Israel, once again putting the small Arabian Peninsula country in the spotlight.

The negotiations have also thrust Qatar into a delicate international balancing act as it maintains a relationship with those viewed as militant groups by the West while trying to preserve its close security ties with the U.S.
Under arrangements stemming from past Hamas ceasefire understandings with Israel, the gas-rich emirate of Qatar has paid the salaries of civil servants in the Gaza Strip, provided direct cash transfers to poor families and offered other kinds of humanitarian aid to Palestinians in Gaza.

Read Editorial | Endless woes: On the Israel-Hamas conflict and Palestine

Qatar has also hosted Hamas’s political office in its capital of Doha for over a decade. Among officials based there is Khaled Mashaal, an exiled Hamas member who survived a 1997 Israeli assassination attempt in Jordan that threatened to derail that country’s peace deal with Israel. Also there is Ismail Haniyeh, Hamas’ supreme leader.

The U.S. sanctioned Mashaal in 2003 for being “responsible for supervising assassination operations, bombings and the killing of Israeli settlers.” Washington sanctioned Haniyeh in 2018, saying he had “close links with Hamas’ military wing and has been a proponent of armed struggle, including against civilians.”

Mashaal, in an interview with Sky News this week, said hostages taken during Hamas’s attack on October 7 could be released if Israel stops its airstrikes — something incredibly unlikely as Israel prepares for a ground offensive inside the Gaza Strip.

Israel’s military says 222 people, including foreigners, were believed captured by Hamas during the incursion and taken into Gaza. Four of those have been released, a mother and daughter on Friday and two more on Monday.

“Let them stop this aggression and you will find the mediators like Qatar and Egypt and some Arab countries and others will find a way to have them released and we’ll send them to their homes,” Mashaal said of the hostages.

Under scrutiny

Hosting the Hamas leaders has brought scrutiny to Qatar, both in the past and since the attack over two weeks ago that killed more than 1,400 people in Israel.

However, the Biden administration has repeatedly praised Qatar for its efforts in working to free the hostages and U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken visited Doha during his recent shuttle diplomacy trip in the region.

“Qatar is a longtime partner of ours who is responding to our request, because I think they believe that innocent civilians ought to be freed,” State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller said on Monday.

Meanwhile, Qatar’s ruling emir, Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani, channeled the wider anger in the Arab world over Israel’s unrelenting airstrikes and siege of the Gaza Strip after the attack. The Hamas-controlled Health Ministry says the strikes have killed over 5,000 Palestinians so far.

“It is untenable for Israel to be given an unconditional green light and free license to kill, nor it is tenable to continue ignoring the reality of occupation, siege and settlement,” Sheikh Tamim said on Tuesday in a speech to the country’s Shura Council, an advisory and legislative body.

He slammed Israel’s siege, saying that it “should not be allowed in our time” to use as weapons the cutting off of water and preventing medicine and food supplies to an entire population.

Qatar has always looked warily at its larger neighbours Saudi Arabia and Iran. It faced a years-long boycott by four Arab nations, including Saudi Arabia, over a political dispute, which Kuwait’s ruler at the time warned could have sparked a war..

Bearing criticism

It also bore withering criticism from the U.S. and others over its pan-Arab satellite news network Al Jazeera. It aired statements from the late al-Qaida mastermind Osama bin Laden and has been providing nonstop coverage of the toll of Israel’s punishing airstrikes in this war with Hamas, including images of the dead and dying that have fueled demonstrations across the West Asia and wider world.

But those concerns about larger powers have seen Qatar balance the risks through its diplomacy and hosting of the forward headquarters of the U.S. military’s Central Command at its sprawling Al-Udeid Air Base. The U.S. considers Qatar as a major non-NATO ally and Doha has widening defense trade and security cooperation with America, including priority delivery for certain military sales.

The Al-Udeid base served as a key node in America’s chaotic withdrawal from Afghanistan, while Qatar also hosted the Taliban officials with whom Washington earlier negotiated to end the longest U.S. war.
But Qatar’s negotiations have led to headaches in the past.

Most recently, Qatar agreed to have just under $6 billion in Iranian assets once frozen in South Korea transferred to Doha as part of a September prisoner swap between Tehran and the U.S. After the Hamas attack, Qatar and the U.S. agreed not to act on any request from Tehran to access those funds for humanitarian goods as initially planned — at least for now.

That enraged sanctions-choked Iran and left Qatar “walking the tightrope of international relations,” said David B. Roberts, who has long studied Qatar as an associate professor at King’s College London.

“If you do want this unique spot,” he added, “then you’re not signing yourself up for an easy life.”

Israel calls for U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres’ resignation after his remarks angered Israel, accusing him of “tolerating and justifying” terrorism

October 25, 2023 06:55 am | Updated 06:55 am IST

Rapidly expanding Israeli airstrikes across the Gaza Strip has killed more than 700 people in the past day as medical facilities across the territory were forced to close because of bombing damage and a lack of power, health officials said on Tuesday.

The soaring death toll from Israel’s escalating bombardment was unprecedented in the decades-long Israeli-Palestinian conflict. It could signal an even greater loss of life in Gaza once Israeli ground forces backed by tanks and artillery launch an expected offensive into the territory aimed at crushing Hamas.

On Tuesday, Israel said it had launched 400 airstrikes over the past day, killing Hamas commanders, hitting militants as they were preparing to launch rockets into Israel and striking command centres and a Hamas tunnel shaft.

While the Israeli-Palestinian conflict continues, Israel’s Minister of Foreign Affairs Eli Cohen, who participated in a Security Council ministerial meeting on the Israel-Gaza situation in United Nations, cancelled his meeting with U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres and called for his resignation after his remarks angered Israel, accusing him of “tolerating and justifying” terrorism.

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Addressing the council, Mr. Guterres said the situation in the Middle East is growing more dire by the hour and the war in Gaza is raging and risks spiralling throughout the region. The U.N. chief said it is “important to also recognise the attacks by Hamas did not happen in a vacuum. The Palestinian people have been subjected to 56 years of suffocating occupation”.

Gaza’s 2.3 million people have been under increasing bombardment and running out of food, water and medicine since Israel sealed off the territory following the devastating October 7 attack by Hamas militants on towns in southern Israel.

Gaza’s Hamas-run Health Ministry said the attacks killed at least 704 people over the past day, including 305 children and 173 women. More than 5,700 Palestinians have been killed in the war, including some 2,300 minors, the ministry said, without giving a detailed breakdown.

(With inputs from agencies)

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