Israel’s Not Alone: The Other Middle East Players Blocking A Gaza Truce

-Analysis-

BEIRUT — The Al Udeid Air Base in Qatar is one of the facilities that the U.S. is using to supply the Israeli military with weapons and ammunition for its war on Gaza. The Israeli daily Haaretz has documented dozens of U.S. military transport planes traveling from Al-Udeid to Israeli military airports.

Yet Doha is also Hamas’s alternative capital, where the group’s exiled leadership resides. And it is from the Qatari capital that Hamas’s military wing, the Qassam Brigades, broadcast — via Al Jazeera — its first statement on the Oct. 7 attack.

This is not to demonize Doha or throw doubt on its positions, rather to question why negotiations on the Israel-Hamas war are blocked. On one side, Israel is pursuing war — despite the bloody and genocidal costs — until Hamas is eliminated. While Hamas insists on a permanent ceasefire and a complete Israeli withdrawal from the entire Gaza Strip.

Doha is one of the capitals managing the war game’s political, media and logistical aspects.

Doha also had a hand in the construction of tunnels in Gaza — Hamas’s only investment in the strip — which were built with funds that Doha sent in bags to Hamas via Israel’s Ben Gurion Airport. This funding was facilitated by Benjamin Netanyahu’s government, which believes that Hamas’s presence in Gaza — by weakening the internationally recognized Palestinian Authority — is necessary to block the political future of the Palestinian cause.

In this complex context, one would expect a certain pragmatism from the influential people in Qatar to stop the river of Palestinian blood in Gaza. But so far, that hour does not seem to have come.

The positions of the United Arab Emirates and the Arab Gulf monarchies toward the Palestinian tragedy go even beyond the ambiguities of Qatar’s role.

A second supply bridge between Abu Dhabi and Tel Aviv has run parallel to the one between Al-Udeid and Tel Aviv. Its goal is to provide Israel with civilian and consumer needs during the war. Here, too, Abraham Accords are present. This model of “peace without conditions” prompted Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu to say, only a few days before Oct. 7, that the Palestinian cause is no longer a condition for peace with Arab countries.

Doha conflicting roles

In this political and moral chaos, the exiled Palestinian leader Mohammed Dahlan, who’s been living in the UAE and who advises Abu Dhabi, has suddenly woken up. Dahlan has offered his relief capabilities in coordination with Hamas and with Tel Aviv’s knowledge (he has a long history of relationships with Israeli security services). It appears Dahlan has found an alternative path to Hamas, after their bloody war in Gaza.

Those of us who do not have all the facts must stop criticizing Hamas as long as Israel is killing the people of Gaza. We must also congratulate Hezbollah for adding us to the “Unity of the Squares” without asking anyone’s opinion.

Israel is a criminal. There is no place for an opinion that differs from that of Hamas and Hezbollah. There is no place for an opinion that considers that the looming two-state solution (no matter how far off) is an unstable future in light of these models that do not pay attention to law, state and politics. This is not the time to differ from Hamas and Hezbollah. And any statement that does not insult Israel is complicity with the aggressor.

Our weak voices are needed

Of course, that equation requires weak voices like ours and the people of Gaza.

But that does not include Doha — the Qatari state-funded Al Jazeera can spare it from demonization. It does not include Abu Dhabi — once there is a moment of rapprochement with Tehran, the swords of treason will be returned to their sheaths. And it does not include Tehran — which stopped its Iraqi factions once Washington hinted that next time it would respond by targeting Iran directly.

The matter is no longer limited to traditional circles of treason. The Oct. 7 attack expanded this dynamic. Those who thought they had stopped being “resistants” seem to have found the temptation to resist was too strong to ignore. So they turned around and joined its ranks.

Fighting is the only way to meet non-Palestinian needs.

Israel is not the only plague afflicting Palestine. This moral issue is surrounded by plagues from all sides. The imposed famine that is creeping into Gaza is finding no obstacle to delay its advance — from neighboring countries all the way to the Gulf and Iran. All of these countries have their own local mouthpieces that shout betrayal to anyone who deviates from their message.

Fighting is the only way to meet non-Palestinian needs. For Israel, it is the only way to kill Palestinian hopes for a state and a future. For Egypt, an end to the fighting would end the prospect of exchanging deportation for debt forgiveness. For Iran, it would mean starting to search for a two-state solution and losing that as a means for its rhetoric of perpetual war.

Only the people of Gaza want to stop the war. And that is not enough to stop it.