As the images of Israel’s bombing of Doha engulfed the news cycle on September 9, Qatari Foreign Minister Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al Thani ascended to the podium to try to make sense of the unprecedented development: a Gulf country had been bombed by Israel. He gave an address and began to take questions, all the while visibly distraught.
For Thani and officials across regional capitals, the strike on a visiting Hamas negotiating delegation for stymied ceasefire talks was a clear turning point in Israel’s nearly two year long genocidal war on Gaza that had, to that point, extended to Tunisia, Syria, Lebanon, Iran and Yemen.
And from the podium, the Qatari foreign minister said what was on everyone’s minds: “Netanyahu himself declared that he will reshape the Middle East. Is this a message that he also intends to reshape the Gulf?” he asked.
The question had its downstream worries for other countries in the region as well: if the Gulf, long thought beyond the reach of Israel and an ally of the US, could be targeted, who will be spared? This concern moved Gulf and regional leaders to make emergency trips to Doha, most prominently UAE ruler Mohamed bin Zayed.
And then the diplomatic and media machinery began to work. First, there was a meeting among Gulf Cooperation Council foreign ministers on Sunday, followed by an Arab-Islamic summit in Doha on Monday to coordinate a firm response.
Some commentators began to imagine that this would be the moment to re-galvanize a united Arab front that had disintegrated in recent years. The Israeli press reported that Egypt was prepared to take the lead on an Arab Nato force, which it had balked at previously.
But when the final communique came out on Monday night, the only unity that could be discerned was in the attached photo showing all Arab and Islamic heads of state standing side by side — with the notable absence of bin Zayed.
Undeterred by this photographic show of togetherness, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu gave the go-ahead to significantly escalate the invasion of Gaza City on Monday night, mere hours after the summit had made a feeble call for a halt to Israel’s genocidal war.
Rather than reviving Arab unity, the summit confirmed what one Arab League source told Mada Masr in the lead up to the meeting: “Arab-Israeli relations are now conducted on a bilateral basis.”
Mada Masr spoke to diplomats and sources in Egypt, the Gulf and the region about the meeting, the stakes behind it and why it failed to bring together a stronger response.
***
The diplomatic panic that ensued from the strike on Doha quickly set in.
Egypt and Turkey, both countries that host Hamas officials on temporary and permanent bases, voiced that they would respond swiftly if Israel carried out an attack on their territory.
Turkish Defense Ministry spokesperson Rear Admiral Zeki Akturk warned in Ankara on September 11 that Israel would “further expand its reckless attacks, as it did in Qatar, and drag the entire region, including its own country, into disaster.”
On the same day, an Egyptian official told CNN that Cairo sent a message to the United States that any Israeli attempts to operate on Egyptian soil will have “severe consequences.”
But as Egypt and Turkey took steps to dissuade Israel from infringing on their sovereignty, they were also weighing the continued presence of Hamas in their respective capitals.
“There are ideas now on how to move forward to avoid a massive regional state of chaos,” an informed Egyptian official told Mada Masr on Friday.
“They are being discussed with the US. The core of these ideas is for Hamas to exit Gaza and all the capitals they live in and take refuge in countries that would receive firm assurances from the US that Israel will not hit those leaders,” the source said. “The trouble, however, is that Hamas is unlikely to accept an exit strategy for its leaders without a long-term ceasefire for Gaza that would involve a measure of withdrawal of Israeli forces.”
A regional diplomat confirmed that Turkey and Qatar also reached out to the US and that there were talks among capitals that host Hamas figures about “what needs to be done beyond the temporary relocation of Hamas figures and the increased security measures that have been imposed after the attack on Doha.”
Israel has repeatedly scuttled ceasefire talks, the attack on the negotiating team in Doha being the most prominent, and Netanyahu has repeatedly stated that Israel “has no choice but to finish the job and complete the defeat of Hamas.”
In line with this belligerent stance, according to the regional diplomat, Israel has not responded with any degree of confirmation to the demands to refrain from targeting Hamas figures in countries where they are staying.
But the continued threat doesn’t mean that countries are willing to see Hamas officials exit immediately, as hosting the group’s leaders offers a sizable diplomatic card for Egypt, Qatar and Turkey.
Speaking specifically about this dynamic as it relates to Doha, the Arab League source says, “Today, it does not seem that Qatar wants to lose its role as a key mediator or its influence over Hamas by keeping its capital as the place of choice for its top leaders, or its strategic relationship with Washington.”
But other countries in the region are much less sympathetic to Hamas and the bid for influence that comes with it.
Qatar may have expected greater solidarity, but “it is important to realize that when it comes to relations with Israel, Arab countries have long agreed that it should be the sovereign choice of every single country,” the Arab League source says.
Arab League Assistant Secretary-General Hossam Zaki drove this point home in more emphatic language in an interview with Al Jazeera.
Arguing that the current climate is not conducive to activating the Joint Arab Defense Agreement, Zaki said that “activating any agreements of this type means that we have reached a stage where there is a definition of a common enemy against which these agreements are activated.”
And this non-alignment played out in the summit itself.
Going into the Doha meeting, Qatar was looking for the summit to set legal moves to hold Netanyahu accountable for the attack on its capital, the Arab League source says.
But on Sunday night, when a draft version of the communique was leaked, a copy of which Mada Masr obtained, there were no proposed action points, legal or otherwise.
By the time the final communique was published on Monday night, the text now had two notable additions.
Point 15 called on all states to “to take all possible legal and effective measures to prevent Israel from continuing its actions against the Palestinian people, including supporting efforts to end its impunity and hold it accountable for its consequences and crimes, imposing sanctions on it, suspending the supply, transfer, or transit of arms, ammunition and military materials, including dual-use items, reviewing diplomatic and economic relations with it, and initiating legal proceedings against it.”
Point 16 called on all member states of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation “to consider the compatibility of Israel’s membership in the United Nations with its charter, given its clear violations of the terms of membership and its continued disregard for UN resolutions, while coordinating efforts to suspend Israel’s membership in the United Nations.”
According to an Egyptian official informed of the summit deliberations, the addition of these two points were put on the table by the Qataris initially in much firmer formulations, but the UAE requested amendments. The two sides continued to negotiate over the language late into the evening before the communique was finally published.
***
Unable to pressure Israel, Qatar seemed to concede that it has no choice but to deepen its ties with the US in the wake of the attack, upon whom it already relies for its defense.
After concluding talks with Netanyahu that ran parallel to the Doha summit, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio said, “We have a close partnership with the Qataris. In fact, we have an enhanced defense cooperation agreement, which we’ve been working on, we’re on the verge of finalizing.”
And within hours of the summit concluding, Israel escalated its month-long invasion of Gaza City, where over a million people were sheltering.
By Tuesday morning, the Israeli military announced that it had struck over 800 Hamas targets and hundreds of people across Gaza City on Monday night, as officials in Tel Aviv declared a new operational level of Gideon’s Chariots II — the plan in which they aim to seize control of the strip’s most populous metropole.
Reacting to the steady progress of Israel’s oncoming violence toward crowded central and western areas of the coastal city, many of the residents Mada Masr spoke to on Tuesday expressed confusion and despair, as they contemplated the expense and pain of another relocation journey toward an uncertain future in the crowded areas of southern Gaza that are not equipped to host so many.
“The top question now is Gaza,” the Egyptian official said after the strike on the Qatari capital, downplaying the possibility of other immediate strikes on Arab capitals. “And the Doha attack has complicated the situation.”
That urgency continues to hold true, now more than ever, and the attack on Qatar and the Doha summit did little to change the state of affairs.
