In Israel’s war in Gaza, Qatar has played an integral role as a mediator, leveraging its long-term contacts with Hamas. Playing a role procuring hostages from a warzone and trying to broker a cease-fire might seem like unalloyed positives. Yet, beyond its catastrophic humanitarian consequences, the Gaza conflict is proving to be poisonous in exacerbating ideological tensions within the Arab world and well beyond, deeply dividing people into diametrically opposed camps, or at least reinforcing existing political and ideological divisions.
Consequently, being closely associated with Hamas is emerging as an increasing risk for Qatar. Already a small but influential core of U.S. lawmakers are deeply critical of Qatar’s role, and pressure – at least partly rooted in a disinformation campaign – induced Texas A&M’s board to cancel its decadelong university partnership in Qatar. Moreover, the real possibility of former President Donald J. Trump winning the presidency again in the November U.S. election heightens risks for Qatar of suffering a reprisal.
Given the time and investments the Gulf state has put into developing relationships with groups across the political spectrum, including violent Islamist groups like Hamas, it seems unlikely Qatar will reverse course completely. Instead, Qatar may decide to take the opposite approach – leaning ever more heavily into the narrative of its mediating role as a “neutral” state. The goal would be to affix the badge of neutrality to the state as much as a rhetorical defense mechanism as anything else, which in such a volatile region and hostile international environment could offer a successful and even advantageous defense.
The Evolution of Security Strategies
Qatar is a small state in a volatile region that has consistently experienced one large-scale conflict every decade for generations. Strategies to secure the Qatari state have, naturally, evolved. Emir Khalifa bin Hamad al-Thani, who ruled from 1972-95, avoided the international spotlight, sheltering under Saudi Arabia’s protection. Crown Prince Hamad bin Khalifa al-Thani gained power and influence in the late 1980s and began shifting Qatar’s position even before his formal reign from 1995 to 2017. He pursued three policies to secure the state. First, he began to turn Qatar into a critical regional security partner for important global powers, especially the United States. Second, Hamad actively augmented Qatar’s soft power reputation, remaking the state as a media, sporting, cultural, and financial global player. Third, and interrelated, under Hamad’s rule Qatar developed a reputation as a quasi-neutral mediator in various conflicts, sometimes bridging “respectable” actors with “rogue” ones as all mediators have to do.
Come the Arab Spring protests in late 2010, however, Qatar jettisoned its hitherto comparatively impartial reputation, investing considerable time, funds, and political capital in supporting Islamist causes around the region. This proved to be a double-edged sword. While it seemed to augment Qatar’s popularity and influence among Arab publics as a state supporting the revolutionaries often via intense Al Jazeera coverage, it deeply irritated regional states. Ultimately, it contributed to three Gulf allies (Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, and the United Arab Emirates) withdrawing their ambassadors from Qatar in 2014 and then the Gulf boycott of 2017-21, with the latter crisis nearly providing something of an existential challenge to the state.
The boycott ended with the Al Ula reconciliation summit in January 2021. Media accounts at the time noted that Qatar’s rivals did not obtain any of their major demands. Still, Qatar’s leaders surely took on board a salutary lesson about the dangers of ongoing engagement with radical Islamist forces, and there was no obvious return to the status quo ante of resuming its support of Islamist forces in the Arab world. Indeed, after the boycott, Qatar concentrated on hosting the highly successful 2022 FIFA World Cup, and regional tensions slowly calmed.
But happenstance has thrust Qatar once again to the forefront of regional politics as the most important interlocutor for engaging with Hamas, the Islamist organization that has long governed Gaza. For the international community, Qatar was the first phone call for world leaders looking to secure the release of hostages taken by Hamas during the October 7, 2023 attacks on Israel. Subsequently, Doha has hosted a steady flow of influential officials ranging from the U.S. secretary of state to the heads of the CIA and Mossad.
In many ways, this can be seen as Qatar’s long-term foreign policy choices coming to a fruitful apex. The most important thrust of Qatar’s foreign policy in the last three decades has been the desire to augment the state’s importance to influential international states, under the logic that if Qatar can make itself a critical interlocutor on regional matters, and those further afield, then Qatar’s security is in turn augmented.
On the Other Hand
The problem for Qatar is that some constituencies, particularly right-wing groups in Washington, view the support that Qatar has given to Islamist forces around the Middle East as a sign of the malign intent of Doha’s leaders by actively supporting radical Islamist forces. Even if there is no such intent, they blame Qatar for the grim situation in Gaza today, thanks to Doha’s years of supporting Hamas. Such constituencies see Hamas as a terrorist group that harbors ingrained antisemitism and is ultimately poisonous to the region, overlooking the fact that Qatar engaged with Hamas with the full and frank support, if not at the explicit request of, governments and security establishments in Israel and the United States.
Regardless of what is at the root of Qatari intentions, Doha and its interlocutors and supporters are not going to win the unfolding war of ideas. If Trump wins the presidency, such constituencies will only gain influence. Moreover, policies like withdrawing from NATO, which are anathema to the broad Washington consensus, remain plausible if not preferable for Trump. Similarly, Trump may threaten and seek to reduce U.S. reliance on the sprawling Al Udeid air base and relocate the United States’ Central Command forward headquarters. Certainly, layers of agreements, contracts, treaties, and bureaucratic impediments might impede Trump, as they did with his desire to withdraw from NATO during his first term. Either way, Qatari decision makers need to seriously ponder the situation in which they now find themselves.
Doubling Down on Neutrality
Given the time and funds Qatar has invested so far in its Hamas relations, Doha is likely to harbor a profound reluctance to sever its ties, end its mediation, and withdraw from the process. One option is for Qatar to double down and find mechanisms to reformulate its role to that of a neutral state focusing primarily on mediation. The heavy emphasis in the current crisis on getting the Israeli hostages released and cessations in fighting established may constitute the most obvious ways to effectuate this change in how Qatar portrays its relations with Hamas. Options – which would likely require some diplomatic ingenuity – might include a formal emiri speech aimed at domestic and international audiences, such as at the United Nations General Assembly, highlighting this renewed and extended commitment to neutral mediation. It could even involve a Qatari proposal to create and host a permanent body or committee dedicated to the resolution of civil and international conflicts globally. Qatar could host and help recruit mediators from around the world to staff this new entity, further internationalizing Qatar’s engagement and security, and the new mediation body could be headed by someone akin to a former secretary general of the U.N.
If Qatar decides to follow this path, it will almost certainly have to sooner rather than later normalize its relations with Israel. While this would not be a popular move in Doha, or most of the rest of the Arab world, under current conditions of public opinion given the Gaza conflict, such a move would be branded as, and really be, an essential part of the shift to genuine neutrality. Crucially, such a move could help Qatar avoid the worst consequences that it may be facing from right-wing forces in Washington. Though such recognition may seem unlikely, Qatar’s successful hosting of the FIFA World Cup also initially seemed like a long shot. Meanwhile, overall such policies would amount to the zenith of Qatari foreign policy and constitute the ultimate fulfillment of one of its most successful initiatives, the role of mediator, giving Qatari foreign policy a necessary reset and a golden opportunity to turn an existing vulnerability and liability into a major asset.
The critique that such policy changes constitute more style than substance and that Qatar would still be engaging with Hamas misses the point. These ideas are not advanced to win an intellectual argument or score debating points. Rather, they would be genuine and valuable gambits in the realm of politics, ideology, and diplomacy, where perception and framing are key. In essence, Qatar would be aiming to disarm critics by seriously and fully normalizing its relations with Israel, while loudly claiming and practically demonstrating its role and value as a truly neutral broker and peacemaker focused on conflict resolution and as such an essential go-between in resolving regional and even global conflicts. This kind of policy shift could prove a masterstroke in turning a major vulnerability into a massive asset, should Qatar decide to follow such a course.
