Israeli Prime Minister Benyamin Netanyahu has recently been sharply critical of Qatar. Bibi even went so far as to hold Qatar partly responsible for the attacks of 7 October 2023, a date that will be remembered with a stone, with the Hamas offensive against Israel. This is part of the slow drift of the Israeli far right, which is no longer intransigent but stubborn on the hostage issue. They are single-handedly blocking the way to any practical solution to prevent the conflict escalating endlessly. Their only avowed objective: to empty Gaza of Palestinians, reoccupy the territory and recolonise the whole strip.
Netanyahu’s criticisms are simply nonsensical when you consider that the Hebrew State largely supported the founder of the Hamas group, headed by Sheikh Ahmed Yassin after the first intifada, who founded the group in 1988 under the name of the para-military and Palestinian wing of the Muslim Brotherhood. Israel, which supports the most radical branch of the Muslim Brotherhood despite its notorious anti-Semitism, is playing with fire. All this, of course, with the aim of dividing Palestine as much as possible. The Hebrew state thinks it can use a few Islamo-nationalists to weaken Yasser Arafat’s Fatah once and for all. The France Television journalist Charles Enderlin, a former correspondent in Israel, has repeatedly explained the complacency of the Israeli right towards Hamas, whose presence condemns Palestine to not being able to create its own state.
And as if that wasn’t enough, we know that Qatar welcomed the leaders of the Hamas group at the request of the United States and also Israel, so that it could negotiate in an emergency. And this emergency really came to the fore on 7 October, when negotiations had to be held to try to save the lives of 140 Israeli hostages held by Hamas in Gaza. At the same time, some 25,000 Gazans, the majority of them women and children, have died since mid-October, and the international community is now powerless to put an end to the bombardments in the Gaza Strip.
An international community critical of ‘Bibi
The Israeli Prime Minister is now caught in a vice by the international community, which is severely condemning and even criticising his military strategy and, above all, his obstinacy in wanting to annihilate the territories of the Gaza Strip, whatever the cost; Bibi, under pressure from his ultra-nationalist coalition, clearly has a very particular vision of how to imagine the end of the conflict in the region. In 2019, Netanyahu recognised just how important it was to support the Hamas branch in order to continue along the same lines: destroying the Palestinian Authority and thus preventing the creation of a Palestinian state.
It is therefore surprising to blame Qatar for what is happening in these territories when Netanyahu’s own policy has often been to deal with the Islamist group Hamas at the expense of Abbas’s Palestinian Authority. Divide and rule: the division of power between the West Bank and the Gaza Strip is his ideal tool for preventing the emergence of a Palestinian state.
Israel suffered its worst attack for decades and lost 1,400 people in 48 hours on 7 October 2022. Its military response will certainly not lead to a lasting political solution once again. What will emerge is an interim solution put in place to stem the bloodshed on both sides of the border. In any case, there is little chance that the resolution of the conflict will be the creation of the Palestinian state that the Israeli government still does not want, even though it would undoubtedly guarantee the security of the Jewish state.
Regional powers to the conflict’s rescue
The urgent task today is to put Middle East diplomacy back on track and, with it, to put an end to the Israeli-Palestinian war, which has no end in sight. The United States, Europe, Egypt and Qatar are all working towards this goal, but Netanyahu’s sudden criticism of Qatar is designed to evade his main responsibility. The general geopolitical order now marginalises the Western powers in the quest for peace, as well as the major international organisations. Today, it is the regional powers that, over the years, have regained control of their spheres of influence. For them, it is a question of showcasing their talent as peace mediators.
More specifically, the United States cannot do much about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict because it withdrew from the Middle East several years ago, and its lack of interest has become even more pronounced with the arrival in office of Joe Biden, whose term of office is drawing to a close. As for the European Union, it is mired in the crisis in Ukraine and remains a mere diplomatic ‘little brother’ in this deafening cacophony of world powers.
That leaves Egypt and Qatar. The former has traditionally maintained peaceful relations with the Hebrew state since 1977 and the signing of the Camp David agreements. Cairo’s relations with the Hamas movement are also cordial. Qatar is the player that can probably come out on top in this conflict, as it enjoys a certain proximity to Islamist movements such as the Taliban, and its ability to negotiate with those who are considered ‘enemies’ by many countries makes it a credible player and an essential regional mediator.
