Qatar: Mediation as a State Policy

As soon as the war broke out between Israel and Hamas, another battle began to be fought, the diplomatic one, to find a way out of a conflict that in just over a month has left 1,200 dead on the Israeli side (according to the latest government estimate) and more than 11,000 on the Palestinian side. And Qatar has played a leading role in it. In this tiny peninsula in the Persian Gulf, with immense wealth thanks to its oil and gas reserves, mediation is a state policy enshrined in its constitution.

Qatar has two decades of experience dealing with international crises and conflicts. In the one now being fought in Gaza, Doha occupies a unique place, the result of a complicated diplomatic lace that allows it to maintain good relations with Iran and the United States, while hosting Hamas' political bureau and delivering aid to Gaza, the latter in coordination with Israel. In recent weeks, he has multiplied his contacts to intercede for the release of Israeli hostages and the cessation of hostilities in the Strip, which is under siege under Israeli bombs.

The talks are progressing discreetly, and in recent days it has emerged that Qatar and Egypt are redoubling efforts, in coordination with the United States, to reach an agreement. But there are already tangible results. So far, Hamas has released four of the approximately 240 hostages who were captured on October 7 when the group's armed wing managed to penetrate Israel in an unprecedented attack. Qatar's mediation was key to the liberation. And last week, his intervention favored the limited reopening of the Rafah crossing, which separates Gaza from Egypt, which has allowed the entry of trucks with humanitarian aid and the departure of hundreds of foreigners trapped in the Strip.

"Given that Qatar has hosted Hamas' political bureau since 2012, it is natural for the U.S. and other countries, including Israel, to seek its assistance in using those contacts to try to secure the release of as many hostages as possible," Kristian Coates Ulrichsen, a Middle East expert at Rice University's Baker Institute, said in an email. in Houston (USA). "Qatar has specialized within its Ministry of Foreign Affairs with special envoys dedicated to conflict resolution and the reconstruction of Gaza," he adds.

Mediation in this war is only the latest link in a chain of interventions that have allowed Doha to achieve a greater weight in international diplomacy than its size suggests. Ignacio Álvarez-Ossorio, professor of Arab Islamic Studies at the Complutense University of Madrid, explains by telephone that, when he came to power in the 1990s, Hamad bin Khalifa Al Thani, the father of the current emir, "wanted to put the country on the map." "He tried to escape from Saudi Arabia's tutelage, because all the small emirates in the area had always been in some way under Riyadh's tutelage. So he wanted to propose a differentiated foreign policy."

The Arabist cites four pillars of Qatari foreign policy: "One, support for the Muslim Brotherhood, to try to gain influence in the Arab world. Another is the launch of the Al Jazeera television channel to project the Qatari narrative. The third, in an area where there is a lot of polarisation between Saudi Arabia and Iran, is to bet on neutrality and maintaining good relations with the two actors. The fourth element was to bet on diplomacy. The Constitution of 2003 contemplates this, it is a State policy, it is committed to diplomacy to put an end to regional conflict, the main cause of permanent, congenital, structural instability" in the area.

Palestinians with foreign passports waited to be cleared to leave Gaza at the Rafah crossing on 7 November. IBRAHEEM ABU MUSTAFA (REUTERS)

Thus, the country has been offering itself as an intermediary for two decades. The experts consulted recall that he intervened in 2007 to resolve a conflict between the Yemeni regime and the Houthis; in 2008 he helped defuse a political standoff in Lebanon that threatened to plunge the country into civil war; He was a key mediator in the negotiations between the U.S. and Iran to try to revive the nuclear deal signed in 2015 and from which Donald Trump's administration withdrew in 2018, and also to close a prisoner exchange between these two countries last September. It also housed a Taliban office after 2013, with U.S. approval, which served to reach the Doha agreement in 2020. That pact laid out the roadmap for the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan after 20 years of war (which was ultimately abruptly rendered by the Taliban's return to power).

Qatar is a key ally of Washington, hosting U.S. central command headquarters and buying billions a year in defense equipment. Álvarez-Ossorio specifies that this "military alliance shields him from possible aggression from neighboring countries." Doha also has good relations with Iran because both countries share one of the world's largest gas fields. And, although it does not formally have relations with Israel, Álvarez-Ossorio points out that there is "a certain understanding" between the two countries "because Qatar is the main financier of the Palestinian administration in Gaza," which has been de facto ruled by Hamas since 2007. "It gives about $30 million a month to pay the salaries of the Palestinian administration and also for the neediest families, and it is channeled through Israeli banks, with the green light from the Israeli government, because it was a way to prevent the humanitarian crisis from worsening," he adds. All this, while Qatar "continues to be a staunch supporter of the creation of an independent sovereign Palestinian state."

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Bader Al Saif, a professor of history at Kuwait University, said in a telephone conversation that the authorities in Doha were "very intelligent" in how they handled the transfer of the Palestinian militia's political office to Qatar after the outbreak of the war in Syria. "The United States was part of this request. They wanted someone who would be in the middle to talk to Hamas without doing it directly [Washington considers it a terrorist organization]," he says. "It was done under the American umbrella."

So Doha maintains "a kind of tightrope walker's balance," in the words of Álvarez-Ossorio. Al Saif recalls that this policy has caused Qatar more than one headache. The most serious was the blockade imposed on it by Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain and Egypt between 2017 and 2021, "unhappy with this very active role" in the region and with [Qatar's] "talks with Islamists, who they considered a threat to their security". But the country came out on top.

Doha has also had to face international criticism for violating the rights of foreign workers during the construction of the 2022 World Cup facilities, women and LGBTIQ people. Emir Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani is an absolute monarch in a wealthy country (with a GDP per capita of $81,970, compared to $33,090 in Spain) where Sharia (Islamic law) reigns.

Álvarez-Ossorio, author of the book Qatar. Perla del Golfo, along with Ignacio Gutiérrez de Terán, believes that this "is the only actor that can receive in the same week the head of the Israeli Mossad, the Iranian Foreign Minister and the head of the US State Department". These appointments took place a few weeks ago, but the contacts have continued. On Thursday, the heads of the CIA, Mossad and the Qatari prime minister met in Doha. And U.S. National Security Council spokesman John Kirby reiterated his thanks to Qatar. On Friday, the Qatari emir held a meeting with the Egyptian president and another with the crown prince of Saudi Arabia, Mohammed Bin Salman.

U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Qatar's Emir Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani on Oct. 13 in Doha.POOL (via REUTERS)

Bader Al Saif points out that Doha "does not act in the middle of nowhere", and "the Gulf region has states that do more or less the same thing". He cites Oman, which "also has good relations with Iran and the United States." The difference, he explains, is that Qatar has "more focus" and is "more stable" from a financial point of view. "If you combine the gas reserves and the high production capacity with a small population [about three million inhabitants], it gives you a very big power." "They have the money, the means, the ambition and they want to work as a force for good in the region. That's how they see themselves," he continues. That's why, he says, Doha talks to all parties. "They have used foreign policy to bolster their national security. They use mediation as a form of survival," he continues. "Mediation as a soft power enshrines your security as a state," he says, "and it also gives you a good brand."

In the conflict between Israel and Hamas there are other important actors, such as Egypt, which is also very active, although "there is a certain mistrust between the parties" because it considers "the Muslim Brotherhood as a terrorist organization," says Álvarez-Ossorio, so Hamas — close to the Muslim Brotherhood — does not see it as neutral. Or Turkey, whose relations with Israel are "not going through their best moment." But Qatar "has a longer track record of negotiating the release of hostages."

In the short term, Doha can play its cards right. In the medium term, however, the pressures on its relationship with Hamas' political wing are likely to increase. Firas Maksad, an expert at the Middle East Institute in Washington, argues via videoconference that the role of intermediary can continue and evolve as this conflict progresses. Especially once the Israeli escalation inside Gaza peaks and negotiations on the future begin. Qatar and other Gulf countries "will be looked for" when the phase of escalation is left behind and "the kind of exit diplomacy, of how we can begin to overcome [the current conflict], becomes more central," he says. "There will be a role for those countries, either through the Arab League or under the umbrella of the U.N. with U.S. support." More diplomacy for Qatar.

With information from Macarena Vidal Liy.

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