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At The New York Sun, Benny Avni points a finger at Qatar as a major part of the problems in the Middle East. He writes:
When will it start to dawn on America and Israel that Qatar is a big part of the problem that led the Mideast to war, rather than the solution? The question is relevant as Doha launches a renewed campaign to bolster its image as the region’s good guy.
Last week, a group of mostly Jewish businessmen quietly met at New York with Qatar’s prime minister and foreign minister, Sheikh Mohammed Bin Abdulrahman Al Thani, Axios reports. That meeting was organized by a former White House aide, Jared Kushner, President Trump’s son-in-law. His private equity firm reportedly received significant Qatari investment.
For decades Qatar has lavished funds on bipartisan causes, including universities, think tanks, and opinion shapers. Since the early 2000s, Washington has repaid Doha in kind. In a phone call with Sheikh Mohammed, Secretary Blinken on Sunday “reiterated his gratitude for Qatar’s partnership and critical efforts to secure the release of hostages held by Hamas and enable the recent humanitarian pause in Gaza,” according to the Department of State.
As the Biden administration increasingly airs in public disagreements with Israel over Gaza, it lavishes praise on Qatar. “Israel must do more to protect innocent civilians,” Vice President Harris harrumphed over the weekend while visiting Dubai, adding that America will seek further Gaza war pauses “in close cooperation with Qatar.”
Those pauses, while hostages were released, ended last week when a Mossad delegation abruptly left Doha. “The Israelis got what they could out of this channel,” a vice president at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, Jonathan Schanzer, tells the Sun. “Now you might start seeing assassination” of Hamas’s operatives living at Doha.
Over the weekend, the chief of Israel’s internal security agency, Ronen Bar, said that killing Hamas leaders is “our Munich,” a reference to the operation to assassinate all participants in the 1972 Olympic massacre. “We will seek them anywhere,” he said. “In Gaza, Judea and Samaria, Lebanon, Turkey, Qatar: It might take a few years, but we will do it.”
It was the first public acknowledgment that Hamas’s leaders can no longer feel safe in their Doha lairs. In the past, only a few Israelis, like the president of the Middle East Media Research Institute, Yigal Carmon, have considered Qatar an enemy. “Qatar is Hamas and Hamas is Qatar,” Mr. Carmon tells the Sun.
Read more here.
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