Published in the Jerusalem Post, 30 April 2024
On April 20 the president of Turkey, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, welcomed the leader of Hamas, Ismail Haniyeh, to Istanbul for talks. Official statements announced that they met to discuss humanitarian assistance to Gaza and the sanctions that Turkey had recently announced against Israel, but the rumor mills were churning out a quite different story.
Reports in the media suggested that this meeting in Ankara was the
result of a breakdown in relations between Hamas and Qatar. Hamas’s political hierarchy has been based in
Qatar since 2012, where the Gulf kingdom has housed them in luxury hotels. More recently, together with the US and
Egypt, Qatar has taken on the role of mediator between Hamas and Israel. On the day of the Erdogan-Haniyeh meeting the
Wall Street Journal (WSJ), citing an Arab official, reported that Qatar
believes its role as trusted mediator is being undermined by Hamas’s refusal to
conclude a hostage-for-truce deal, and that it has threatened Hamas leaders with
expulsion from Qatar if they do not.
Other reports, noting
that the truce talks have stalled and perhaps assuming that Hamas will remain
intransigent, state that Hamas’s political chiefs are actively exploring moving
their base of operations out of Qatar. The
WSJ says Hamas has recently contacted two regional countries about having its
leaders live there. One of them is Oman
(which has denied the story). The other,
one media report suggests, could be Iran.
Or, it now appears, it might be Turkey.
If the Hamas leadership
does leave Qatar, the long-standing Hamas-Qatari relationship could be severed,
mediated negotiations would certainly be disrupted, and any slim chance of a
deal to free dozens of the Israeli hostages held captive in Gaza would go
on the back burner. Israel’s options to
rescue the hostages would be reduced to the long-anticipated Rafah operation
and a military defeat of Hamas.
On April 17, Democratic US congressman Steny Hoyer accused Qatar of failing to exert sufficient pressure on the Palestinian group to accept a ceasefire proposal. He went so far as to accuse Qatar of "siding with Hamas." If they failed to persuade Hamas to accept a deal, he said that Washington would re-evaluate its ties with the Gulf country.
This prompted Qatar to
release a statement, expressing surprise at Hoyer’s threat.
"We share his
frustration that Hamas and Israel have not reached an agreement on the release
of the remaining hostages,” the statement ran, “…but Qatar is only a mediator –
we do not control Israel or Hamas."
Qatar, along with the US
and Egypt, has been trying to mediate a deal from the start of the Gaza
war. Despite Hoyer's criticism, the Gulf
kingdom has gained considerable praise for its efforts, particularly its
success in brokering the temporary ceasefire which
took effect from November 24 to 30, and included the release of 50 Israeli hostages held in Gaza and
150 Palestinian prisoners held in Israel. On November 27, the Qatari foreign ministry announced
that a two-day extension to the ceasefire had been agreed in which 20 Israelis
and 60 Palestinians would be released. Close to the end of the first extension another
one day extension to the truce was agreed by both sides, but it broke down on
December 1, and shortly afterward hostilities were resumed.
Since then no amount of
mediation has succeeded in gaining agreement on the terms of a further truce
and hostage release. The negotiations
have stalled. And Qatar is unhappy, not
only at its failure to persuade Hamas into accepting any kind of deal, but also
at the criticism it is facing in consequence.
On April 17 Qatar’s prime minister, Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman bin Jassim Al Thani, announced that Qatar is re-evaluating its mediation role in ceasefire negotiations between Israel and Hamas.
“Qatar is proceeding with a complete re-evaluation
of its role,” he said, complaining, without naming Steny Hoyer, about “the
exploitation by some politicians who are trying to conduct their electoral
campaigns by defaming the State of Qatar...There are limits to this role and
limits to the ability to which we can contribute to these negotiations in a
constructive way.”
The limits have,
perhaps, been reached when all efforts to replicate the truce-for-hostage deal
successfully concluded in November is blocked by Hamas intransigence. So perhaps the media reports are
accurate. Perhaps Qatar has lost
patience, and is showing Hamas the door.
Although Hamas has
denied that it is seeking a new base, the Haniyeh-Erdogan meeting, followed as
it was by a trip to Doha, Qatar’s capital, by Hakan Fidan, the Turkish foreign minister,
may indicate something different.
As a side issue, some in
the Israeli government go along with congressman Hoyer, and regard the Gulf
Kingdom as too biased to be impartial. Some would actually welcome Qatar
abandoning its mediator role, in the hope that if Qatar steps aside,
Cairo will take over.
“Egypt should have been the main mediator from the beginning,” a member of the hostage negotiation team in Israel told the UK Daily Telegraph. “They don’t align with the Muslim Brotherhood mentality, and have no vested interests with Hamas like Qatar and Turkey do.”
The Israeli negotiator
has a point. Qatar and Erdogan’s Turkey have
both supported Hamas for years, and they share the Sunni Islamist ideology
it promulgates. Egypt, on the other
hand, has banned the Muslim Brotherhood and declared it a terrorist
organization.
On April 22 the
Huffington Post reported that, in rare extensive interviews last month, two
prominent Hamas leaders separately spoke of flexibility on their political
leadership’s location. They spoke shortly
after a Hamas delegation had returned from a lengthy visit to Iran. As a
consequence some experts saw Tehran as a possible next base for the organization,
a scenario that would leave the US with far less access to, or leverage over,
Hamas.
Basem Naim, a member of Hamas’s politburo in Gaza, explained that if Qatar decided to withdraw its hospitality, the organization was quite prepared to move.
“Hamas leadership is
used to [moving] from place to place,” he said.
But Hamas is
increasingly concerned with projecting a confident image and challenging the
idea it is becoming more isolated. So when the Huffington Post contacted Naim again
on April 21, he had somewhat changed his tune.
He pointed to a statement he had recently issued rejecting the WSJ article
as “complicit with the Israeli misleading propaganda.”
Claims that Hamas “is
considering leaving Qatar for another country,” he said “… have no basis.”
Time will tell.
Published in the Jerusalem Post, and the Jerusalem Post online as: "Is Qatar's relationship with Hamas on the rocks?", 30 April, 2024:https://www.jpost.com/middle-east/is-qatars-relationship-with-hamas-on-the-rocks-analysis-799105
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