As we await the release of more hostages from Gaza, all eyes are on Qatar — a small nation with a big role in global affairs.
An Israeli delegation is there to discuss an agreement that could include a six-week pause in fighting, more aid and an exchange of hostages and Palestinian prisoners, similar to what Qatar and Egypt suggested in December. President Biden is hopeful it could happen by the end of the weekend, though Israel and Hamas have pushed back on that timetable.
Qatar helped negotiate the release of some hostages from Gaza earlier and assisted with the transport of injured Palestinians to Egypt, as well as aid trucks and medicines through the Rafah gate. But how, exactly, does Qatar exert such influence, and why?
First, some background.
Qatar is about four times the size of Rhode Island, but with a lot more wealth. Oil and gas fuel the economy, with an estimated gross domestic product of $267 billion. Qatar plans to increase its production capacity for liquefied natural gas by nearly 85 percent to 142 million tons by the end of the decade, due to the discovery of vast new gas fields.
Once a colony of Great Britain, Qatar got its independence in 1971 and has become a powerbroker on the international scene, spreading its money around in seen and unseen ways, generating praise and concern.
When Hamas terrorists stormed into Israel on Oct. 7, killing 1,200 citizens and taking hostages to Gaza, Qatar was involved in the diplomacy because of its relationship with the players in the region, especially Hamas.
According to a recent piece in the New Yorker:
“Qatar has been a particularly useful intermediary with Hamas because of its long-standing support for Gaza, for which it has provided what some estimates suggest is more than a billion U.S. dollars’ worth of aid since 2014. Qatari money has been used to help pay for fuel and government workers in Gaza, including the salaries of doctors and teachers. Qatar has also hosted an overseas political office for Hamas in Doha since 2012—a decision for which it has faced criticism from Israel and from some U.S. lawmakers, but which it defends as having been made at the request of American officials, who hoped to establish a channel of communication.”
The Biden administration trusts Qatar enough to have let it handle the payment for the release of hostages in Iran when the U.S. had to transfer $6 billion from South Korea through Qatar to Iran. Qatar provided the plane that brought home the hostages.
But at times Qatar loses credibility.
The presence of Islamist groups like Hamas in Qatar was one of the reasons cited by four conservative Arab countries — Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates (UAE), Egypt and Bahrain — for blockading Qatar from 2017 to 2021, after which relations improved.
And as the nonpartisan organization Freedom House wrote in its most recent report, “While Qatar citizens are among the wealthiest in the world, the vast majority of the population consists of noncitizens with no political rights, few civil liberties, and limited access to economic opportunity.”
When Secretary of State Antony Blinken visited Qatar on one of his swings through the region, he said, while standing next to Qatar’s prime minister and Foreign Minister Sheikh Mohammed Bin Abdulrahman al-Thani, “there can be no more business as usual with Hamas.”
Qatar also drew negative press last year when hosting the FIFA soccer games, bringing in large numbers of foreign workers to build the stadiums.
One sector where Qatar is highly active is in the American education space.
According to a study done in 2022 by the National Association of Academics in the United States, Qatar has been the largest foreign donor to American academia since 9/11. The report finds that between 2001 and 2021, Qatar gave $4.7 billion to U.S. universities, with the largest amounts to Cornell, Georgetown, Northwestern and Carnegie Mellon — some of which then established branches in Doha, Qatar.
Is that good or bad? It depends.
Qatar began giving money, through its foundation, to Texas A&M in 2003 to open a campus in Doha. Controversy erupted over what courses were being taught and information exchanges shared between the Texas campus and the Doha campus — specifically on scientific topics and nuclear research. Allegations prompted a letter from the president of the university clarifying that no nuclear engineering classes or courses were being offered in Doha.
Now Texas A&M is closing its Doha campus, citing instability in the region. Education experts are debating why the partnership between the university and Qatar has ended after decades of collaboration.
Qatar is a hard country to figure out, but it’s clear it will be critical in the days ahead. Hostage families are counting on them, with over 100 still being held in Gaza.
As Winston Churchill famously said in 1939 about the Soviet Union: “It is a riddle wrapped in an enigma.”
Tara D. Sonenshine is senior fellow at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University.