By facilitating the release of hostages held by Hamas, Qatar confirms its role as an essential mediator between Westerners and radical movements, while muting criticism of its links with the Palestinian Islamist movement.
The agreement reached early Wednesday between Hamas, which holds some 240 Israeli and foreign hostages, and Israel via Doha, is the incarnation “of what we can do and that no one else can do”, welcomed the spokesperson for the Qatari Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Majed Al-Ansari.
“We have engaged the whole country in this direction. If it doesn’t work, it’s hell,” he told AFP.
And the thanks did not take long: the World Jewish Congress, via its president, expressed in a press release its “deep gratitude” to Qatar “for its role in the imminent release” of the first hostages.
Many experts note the unique position of the small Gulf emirate, which has managed to maintain warm relations with Western powers while maintaining ties with radical groups and states considered pariahs, even by its close allies.
Qatar “has an advantage that the other candidates for negotiation do not have: it has hosted the political leadership of Hamas” in Doha for around ten years, underlines Hasni Abidi, director of the Center for Studies and Research on the Arab world and the Mediterranean, based in Geneva.
However, it is “the only one authorized to negotiate on behalf of Hamas and on behalf of the Ezzedine al-Qassam Brigades”, the armed wing of the Palestinian Islamist movement, he explains.
“Fool’s game”
Within the Gulf countries, the father of Emir Al-Thani is the only one to have, in 2012, visited Gaza, then controlled by the Islamist movement for five years, observes Hasni Abidi. The gas-rich state is also a loyal financial supporter, having long helped pay the salaries of civil servants in the Gaza Strip.
Although Egypt has been the main mediator between Israel and Palestinian groups in recent years and said to have played a role in mediation, and although President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s Turkey has offered its services, Qatar has emerged as the more legitimate to work for the safe return of the hostages.
Doha, which benefits from the status of a privileged partner of the Atlantic Alliance, is also respected by the United States, Israel’s faithful allies.
“It is home to the largest American military base in the region,” recalls Agnès Levallois, vice-president of the Mediterranean Middle East Research and Studies Institute.
It is therefore not surprising that Qatar has carried out intense diplomatic activity since the start of the war between Israel and Hamas, which began on October 7 after the bloody attacks by the Islamist movement which left more than 1,200 dead in Israel.
On October 21, he had already obtained the release of two American women before that of two Israeli women a few days later.
Qatar has “specialized in the release of hostages” and has therefore been able to benefit from its past experiences, notes Étienne Dignat, researcher at the Center for International Research.
“It’s the country that speaks to everyone, including the “unfriendly”, and that has good networks,” he says.
And “it is precisely the accumulation of these mediations which makes him an essential interlocutor”, continues Hasni Abidi.
Doha intervened in September in the release of Americans detained in Iran, and facilitated the release last May of Belgian humanitarian Olivier Vandecasteele, also detained by Tehran.
He also played a role in the release in 2013 of a Swiss teacher kidnapped in Yemen and in the release of hostages in Mali the same year.
More recently, on October 16, while all eyes were on Gaza, Qatar announced that it had repatriated Ukrainian children who had been kidnapped by Russia to Ukraine.
“Convenient” intermediary
It is a “very convenient intermediary for Westerners who today find themselves in a very uncomfortable position,” observes Étienne Dignat.
“If they negotiate, they are accused of compromise. If they refuse, they are accused of insensitivity to the fate of the hostages,” he explains. “We are therefore witnessing a fool’s game which allows them to keep up appearances while seeking to obtain releases. »
“There is something for everyone,” he continues, while in the past, the emirate had invited the Taliban to open an office in Doha with the approval of the United States, making it possible to negotiate the withdrawal of American forces from Afghanistan. in 2021, followed by the return of the Taliban to power.
For Qatar, the release of Hamas hostages “relegitimizes […] its role as an indispensable state that does the “dirty work” despite criticism, underlines Hasni Abidi, in reference to Washington which warned its ally that there could no longer be “status quo with Hamas”.
With the crisis in Gaza, Qatar was once again able to stand out from the other Gulf countries which, led by Saudi Arabia, had imposed a blockade on it in 2017, demanding that it break its ties with Hamas and the Brotherhood. Muslims and reduce its relations with Iran.
“Qatar is a very small country, which since its creation has tried to find its own path allowing it […] not to be completely in the Saudi orbit,” underlines Agnès Levallois.