Etiquettes : Qatar, Muskim brotherhood, Hamas, israel, October 7 attack, United States, NATO,
Contrary to how Qatar is presented, the emirate is not a neutral negotiator in the matter of the hostages from Operation Al-Aqsa Deluge. A mistake by its minister, Lolwah Al-Khater, who came to follow the negotiations in Tel Aviv, shows, on the contrary, that Doha exercises authority over Hamas. The new members of the Israeli war cabinet were surprised to discover that Qatar had participated in Benjamin Netanyahu’s plot to prepare the attack on Israel on October 7, 2023.
Lolwah Al-khather’s mistake
Lolwah Al-Khater, Qatari Minister of International Cooperation, visited Tel Aviv on November 25, 2023. It was the first time that a Qatari official had visited Israel. She was received by the war cabinet to resolve issues related to the implementation of the hostage exchange agreement. She also visited Gaza.
Accustomed to discussions with David Barnea, director of Mossad, she does not seem to have grasped that the war cabinet includes not only loyalists of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Without hiding, she then, to gain time, made decisions on behalf of Hamas without consulting him.
Members of the former opposition who joined the emergency cabinet and witnessed this discussion were shocked to see her step out of her role as a mediator and reveal her authority over Hamas, the Palestinian branch of the Muslim Brotherhood.
After this meeting, Joshua Zarka, Deputy Director General of Strategic Affairs at the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs, stated that Israel would « settle scores with Qatar » as soon as it had finished its role as a mediator. Indeed, if Qatar has the ability to give orders to Hamas, it can no longer conceal its responsibility for the October 7 attack. Not only it is not a mediator, but it is an enemy of the Israelis.
Let’s briefly revisit the identity of Qatar.
Qatar and the United States
Qatar only became independent from the British Empire in 1971. Its first emir, Khalifa bin Hamad Al Thani, then turned to France. He developed his country while being wary of the easy revenues from hydrocarbons. However, in 1995, he was overthrown by his son, Hamad bin Khalifa Al Thani. The new emir concluded gas and oil agreements, mainly with Anglo-Saxon companies (Exxon Mobil, Chevron Phillips, Shell, Centrica), French (Total), Chinese (China National Offshore Oil, CNOOC, Petrochina), Indian, South Korean, and Japanese. Money now flowed abundantly.
In 1996, following the Oslo Accords, Qatar, in partnership with Franco-Canadian Jews David and Jean Frydman, friends of Yitzhak Rabin and Yasser Arafat, created a pan-Arab television channel to confront Arab and Israeli perspectives, Al-Jazeera. It was an immediate success. However, the channel, which intellectually participated in the peace movement in Israel, became the target of the United States during their wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.
In 2002, the United States signed a military agreement with Qatar, establishing the headquarters of their Middle East troops, CentCom, at the gigantic Al-Udeid base. It houses 11,000 soldiers and about a hundred aircraft. For this, they withdrew their personnel from Saudi Arabia.
The Pentagon reminded the emir that he could not defy them: one morning, he was awakened by Special Forces in his bedroom. A US officer assured him that they had just protected him from an imaginary coup. The emir understood the message and henceforth complied with the demands of his protectors.
In 2005, Al-Jazeera’s ownership was shaken by a boycott by Saudi advertisers. The Frydman brothers withdrew from the channel. It was completely reformatted by the JTrack consulting firm. It appointed Brother Wadah Khanfar as its head [1]. Gradually, he censored any criticism of « American imperialism » and even went so far as to remove some images showing US crimes in Iraq. Al-Jazeera, whose several journalists were killed by US forces and one collaborator was imprisoned and tortured in Guantanamo, became the mouthpiece of Anglo-Saxon powers and gave a voice to Sunni Islamism. In 2009, Wadah Khanfar visited the United States, where he was received by all those who counted among the ruling elites.
In 2008, the emir installed a new president in Lebanon, in violation of the Constitution, replacing the outgoing president.
In 2011, the head of JTrack, Brother Mahmoud Jibril, suddenly became the leader of the regime’s opposition, although he had been a minister. The Palestinian Brother Wadah Khanfar left Al-Jazeera to chair a Turkish think tank, the Al-Sharq Forum. The channel was taken over by the Prime Minister, Sheikh Hamad bin Jassem bin Jaber Al Thani. Instantly, it became a tool for NATO, becoming its main propaganda tool in the Arab world. It provided a biased view of conflicts in Libya and Syria to transform into the channel of the Muslim Brotherhood. Imam Youssef al-Qaradawi became the official preacher of the channel. He explained to his listeners that today, without a doubt, Muhammad would be on NATO’s side.
Qatar became the main mediator in the Middle East. It negotiated peace agreements among Arabs wherever the United States requested, in Western Sahara, in inter-Palestinian rivalries, in Darfur, Eritrea, and Yemen. But it could also use its power to reignite wars. Thus, in 2012, it gave $2 billion to Sudan, led by Brother Omar al-Bashir, to recall its special envoy, General Mohammed Ahmed Mustafa al-Dabi [2]. Until then, appreciated by all, especially for his peaceful role in Darfur, he had been appointed president of the Arab League’s international mission in Syria. He and his colleagues had access to everything they wanted to see. In a preliminary report, he concluded that Western media were lying and that there was no revolution in Syria.
In 2013, the emir abdicated in favor of his son, Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani.
The « Gulf crisis »
From June 2017 to January 2021, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates imposed a blockade on Qatar, paralyzing the Gulf Cooperation Council. This Cold War was misunderstood. According to the Financial Times, it was linked to a dark ransom payment story, while others claimed it was due to a statement by Emir Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad al-Thani, supporting the political use of Islam practiced by both the Muslim Brotherhood and Iran.
In reality, the President of the Arab Republic of Egypt, Abdel Fattah al-Sissi, managed to obtain documents from the secret society that had governed his country for a year, the Muslim Brotherhood. As the former director of Military Intelligence, he studied these documents. After the speech in Riyadh by the U.S. President Donald Trump against the terrorism of the Muslim Brotherhood on May 21, 2017, al-Sissi understood the potential use of the information. He then transmitted the evidence to the Saudi king, hoping to gain support in his struggle against the Brotherhood. The evidence revealed a plot by the Brotherhood and Qatar to overthrow the Saudi king, Salman bin Abdulaziz Al Saud. For the king and his son, it was a shock: not only was the Brotherhood, which the Kingdom had nurtured for years, supporting ISIS, but it also targeted the monarch.
On June 5, 2017, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Egypt, and Bahrain, followed by the Yemeni government of Abdrabbuh Mansur Hadi, the Libyan government of Tobruk, Mauritania, the Maldives, and Comoros, severed diplomatic ties with Qatar. These countries closed their land, air, and sea borders to the emirate, strangling it suddenly. U.S. President Donald Trump sided with the move, accusing Qatar of financing « religious extremism. » Qatar received support from Turkey, Morocco, Hamas, Iran, and Germany, where the National Guide of the Brotherhood, Ibrahim el-Zayat, had connections at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Niger and Chad, however, supported Saudi Arabia.
Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Egypt, and Bahrain issued a 13-point ultimatum to Qatar, urging it to break ties with political Islam and its supporters, including Turkey and Iran.
The crisis was resolved when U.S. President Donald Trump attempted to reconcile the Arab countries and Israel. He facilitated the normalization of relations between Morocco and Israel, followed by the resolution of the Gulf crisis. The controversy surrounding political Islam was temporarily set aside.
The Emirate of Qatar and the Muslim Brotherhood
The Brotherhood (Ikhwan) aims to restore the Caliphate, as outlined by its founder, Egyptian Hassan El-Banna, after World War I. In a letter to the then-Egyptian Prime Minister, he described three objectives:
Reform of legislation and the unification of all courts under Sharia.
Recruitment within the armies by instituting voluntary service under the banner of jihad.
Connecting Muslim countries and preparing for the restoration of the Caliphate in accordance with Islam’s required unity.
The Brotherhood is a secret society organized on the model of the United Grand Lodge of England. Its actions are known primarily through testimonies from former members or documents seized during its defeats.
From its inception, the Brotherhood has operated militias to assassinate its opponents. It initially expanded in Egypt, then throughout the Arab world and Pakistan. The UK and the U.S. quickly enlisted its politicians (such as Brother Muhammad Zia-ul-Haq in Pakistan or Brother Mahmoud Jibril in Libya) and its militias (such as Al-Qaeda, ISIS, or the League for the Protection of the Tunisian Revolution). Upon entering the White House, President Barack Obama appointed a Brotherhood member, Mehdi K. Alhassani, to his National Security Council to establish a permanent link with the organization.
When the U.S. started the Syrian episode of the « Endless War, » they asked Hamas to move its office from Damascus to Doha. When Saudi Arabia definitively broke with the Brotherhood in 2014, Qatar spontaneously replaced it. Despite not having the same resources as its powerful neighbor, Qatar became its main financier with the approval of the United States. In 2018, Qatar took over the salaries of Hamas officials in Gaza, with the consent of Benjamin Netanyahu; his ambassador delivered suitcases filled with $15 million in small denominations each month. In 2022, U.S. President Joe Biden elevated Qatar to the status of a Major Non-NATO Ally, an honor reserved for about ten countries worldwide.
Lolwah Al-Khater’s mistake attests that Qatar wields authority over the political and military strategy of Hamas.
Thierry Meysan
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