Intense U.S. diplomacy to secure the release of hundreds of hostages held by Hamas is shining a spotlight on the complicated role held by the tiny Gulf nation of Qatar.
At times a pariah among its immediate neighbors, the gas and oil-rich monarchy has managed for years to straddle the line between being a close U.S. partner while enraging Gulf countries over its support for the Muslim Brotherhood, a movement of political Islam that helped inspire Hamas’s founding.
U.S. officials are putting increasing pressure on Qatar to distance itself from Hamas following its abhorrent terrorist attack against Israel on Oct. 7.
But Qatar’s track record as a reliable mediator between authoritarian states, terrorist groups and democracies make it one of the only countries that can help retrieve hundreds of innocent people from the Gaza Strip.
“We’re using every connection we can to try to get the release of the hostages. So Qatar has avenues that we think are helpful,” Sen. Ben Cardin (D-Md.), chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, told The Hill.
“We have been very clear about Qatar’s role in allowing Hamas reign in their country — it’s wrong. And we have pointed that out and we’ll continue to point that out,” he said.
But the relationship is “complicated,” Cardin added, pointing to the Al Udeid Air base in Doha, owned by Qatar but home to U.S. Central Command and U.S. Air Force Central Command. The base is the epicenter of American military power overseeing the Middle East and Central Asia, including Iran, Pakistan, Afghanistan and countries of the former Soviet Union.
Hamas is estimated to have kidnapped more than 200 people from Israel during the Oct. 7 massacre that also killed more than 1,400 people in southern Israel. Americans are among those being held and their families have advocated for their release in Israel and in Washington D.C.
Qatar has allowed Hamas to operate a political office in Doha since 2012 and it has mediated between Israel and Hamas in previous rounds of conflict, also helping with the transfer of money and goods to the Gaza Strip that came out of such deals.
But the scale of the current hostage crisis is unlike anything in recent memory. Among those kidnapped are toddlers, a nursing baby, the elderly, mothers, fathers, sons and daughters, all being held in locations and conditions unknown.
Hamas’s military wing, the Al-Qassam Brigades, said this week that dozens of the hostages have been killed in Israeli air strikes, but they offered no proof. The U.S.-designated terror group has otherwise provided little to no information on the captives and no visitation from international aid groups.
“Something very basic, Red Cross, Doctors Without Borders are not allowed to get in, we don’t even know if our loved one is alive or dead,” said Ruby Chen, a U.S.-Israeli citizen whose 19-year-old son Itay, a soldier in the Israel Defense Forces (IDF), is believed to be held by Hamas.
“Want to think about that for a second? Basic. Make it happen.”
Qatar has so far helped facilitate the release of four of Hamas’s hostages, an American-Israeli mother and daughter, and two elderly women.
Gerald Feierstein, a former ambassador to Yemen and four-decade veteran of the foreign service in the Middle East and Gulf, said that Qatar likes to view itself as a Switzerland-like mediator in the Middle East and that provides them clout and protection in a hostile environment.
“They see that they can play a role by keeping channels of communication open to people that the world despises. Whether it’s the Taliban or Hamas, or the Iranians for that matter, they see that they can be useful by being able to communicate or pass messages,” Feierstein said.
“They really see themselves as playing a role much larger than their size and impact would suggest.”
Secretary of State Antony Blinken has thanked Qatar for “playing a very important role” in securing the release of the American-Israelis. But the secretary has also raised in Doha that “there can be no more business as usual with Hamas.”
And he reportedly called on the Qatari government to tone down rhetoric in news coverage about Israel on Al Jazeera, the nominally private but Qatari-funded English and Arabic news group.
“I don’t think that — forced to choose — there’s any question that the Qataris value the relationship with the U.S. more highly” than with Hamas, said Feierstein, now a distinguished senior fellow on U.S. diplomacy at the Middle East Institute.
Feierstein also spoke to the Qatari’s track record in diplomacy, pointing to their role in the early 2000s of trying to mediate between warring factions in Yemen; mediation efforts between Ethiopia and Eritrea; and offering Doha as a venue for the U.S. to hold talks with the Taliban.
“I can’t think of any time where the Qataris said that they would do something and didn’t do it. I think that they are reliable,” he said.
“Generally speaking, their word is good. And obviously if you want to play the role that they want to play, that’s an absolutely essential component. If people didn’t trust you then they wouldn’t turn to you to undertake these things.”
It’s unclear what it might take for Hamas to release the hostages, who are among a wide range of factors that is seemingly delaying an Israel ground offensive in the Gaza Strip.
Among possible Hamas demands are a ceasefire amid heavy Israeli airstrikes, asking Israel to release Palestinian prisoners, money or some type of immunity.
Rep. Haley Stevens (D-Mich.), co-chair of the Congressional Task Force on American Hostages and Americans Wrongfully Detained Abroad, called the task of rescuing the hostages “unprecedented,” speaking to The Hill after a press conference with the families whose loved ones are being held by Hamas.
The task force was an initiative started in 2021 to help congressional offices navigate the support available for constituents and their families in circumstances of their loved one being unjustly arrested or detained abroad, or even taken captive by a terrorist group.
But she called this situation “very different.”
“This was an act of lawlessness. It wasn’t even an act of war because it’s outside of the rules of war to do what has been done here. And this has been part of the head spinning terror that was descended upon the Israelis on October 7th,” she said
Asked about Qatar’s role as a mediator, Stevens called for the administration to be open about how the U.S. is carrying out its diplomacy.
“Our diplomacy is going to be essential, the work of our ambassadors, the work of our State Department, and that’s a place that we as members of Congress can lend oversight and, if need be, appropriating authority to our federal agencies to assist in those negotiations,” she said.
Haley raised concern that the administration’s pending transfer of $6 billion in frozen Iranian funds — facilitated in exchange for the release of Americans wrongfully detained — has raised the cost for hostages.
“While we don’t want to slow things down by any stretch of the means, engaging members as [the administration] can in classified settings is very helpful,” she said.