How can a country play host to both the largest U.S. military base in the Middle East and a U.S. and U.K. proscribed terrorist organization?
This is the question being asked of the tiny Gulf nation Qatar. Since 2012, Hamas’s political leadership has kept an official office in Doha. And since October 7, when it launched the deadliest civilian attack on Israel in its history, committing the largest massacre of Jews since the Holocaust, keeping such company became news, as did the country’s efforts to be a critical bridge for mediation; a go-between for the West and the terrorist group when a crisis demands de-escalation.
Indeed, without the clout that comes with hosting the group, Qatar would not have had the legitimacy to have negotiated, first the release of four Hamas-held hostages and now, together with the U.S., a cease-fire that would temporarily halt the Israel-Hamas war. According to the deal, approved by Israel Wednesday, as part of the cease-fire, fifty hostages, of the 236, will be released from captivity in Gaza in exchange for 150 Palestinians in Israeli prisons.
Despite this significant achievement after six weeks of a catastrophic war, for some the scale and barbarity of the Hamas October assault would demand a line be drawn against Qatar hosting Hamas.
U.S. Senator Ted Cruz has said, “Qatar is harboring mass murderers who just orchestrated a terrorist attack,” and that America should ensure Qatar turns over the Hamas leadership.
Chris Bryant, a U.K. shadow minister, pushed British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak to have “tough words with Qatar in particular about why it has hosted so many people from Hamas over recent years.”
Such thinking reflects a binary view of the world: you are either with us or against us. It was the core of the Bush Doctrine. But especially after this Qatari-brokered deal, it’s incumbent upon Western policy makers to decide whether that outlook made the world a safer or more dangerous place.
Whether an ally can host one’s enemy, even a terrorist organization, was never a “black-or-white” consideration for policy makers of the past. Since 1971, Britain had hosted an office of the PLO, despite it being classified as a terrorist group.
Similarly, the U.S. was seemingly permissive towards groups that raised money for the IRA — an organization whose stated aim was the violent overthrow of the British in Northern Ireland.
Playing host to a friend’s enemies gave governments leverage over their guests. In turn, that could prove useful to one’s ally.
For example, in 1979 the PLO agreed to negotiate the release of 66 Americans taken hostage in the U.S. embassy in Tehran, despite President Jimmy Carter refusing to talk to the group directly. The PLO had the pre-existing connections and influence with the new Iranian revolutionary government. Their efforts would yield the release of 13 U.S. hostages, before negotiations soured.
At the time, the PLO and its militant wings were launching a series of terror attacks in Israel, Europe and the wider world. In 1972, 11 Israeli athletes were taken hostage and murdered at the Munich Olympics. In 1973, American diplomats were even murdered at the hands of Palestinian terrorists in an attack on the Saudi embassy in Khartoum. The hijacking of international commercial airliners became commonplace. Throughout the terror, the office in London remained — and to America’s eventual benefit.
That funding was sent from America to the IRA, and was known and traced by the U.S. government, gave the U.S. leverage over it. For years, it went unexploited. But when U.S. President Bill Clinton negotiated the Good Friday Agreement, which ended the conflict, it proved critical.
Neither country considered its ally complicit in terrorism. Nor did it damage their strong bonds. More than now, great powers accepted they must have a line of communication to their enemies. Having an ally host an enemy may have been uncomfortable, but necessary when the day came that one needed to speak to them. After all, diplomacy was necessarily messy. If too finely drawn, a government may close paths to de-escalation, even peace.
The acceptance of ambiguity is increasingly giving way to with-or-against-us thinking. Perhaps it was easier then: peculiar accommodations with the enemy were not common knowledge or easy to find out. Even today, few know of the PLO office in London in the 70s.
Today’s surfeit of information arguably makes diplomacy more difficult. Paradoxically, in those simpler times, more nuance was allowed. There was greater space for consideration and time-biding. While the public has always demanded clear positions on what is common knowledge, in the past that wasn’t based on a 24-hour news cycle; nor was the greatest bank of information available at everyone’s fingertips. Now, the opportunity to swim in gray areas, where the most critical diplomacy takes place, has shrunk. Being caught in those waters risks looking indecisive, or worse, complicit.
Instead, it’s politically safer to opt for stronger positions that favor optics over outcomes: speaking to the enemy is surrender. A side must be taken.
The implication is that there’s one right side. Anything less is wrong. Failure to distinguish the mutual exclusion is also the wrong side.
But will this binary framework help bring peace to the current conflict in the Middle East? Will it make the releasing of hostages easier? How can Qatar be on the side of Israeli hostages and be publicly thanked by the Israeli national security advisor, yet host Hamas?
Diplomacy, rather than outright victory, is by definition a meeting somewhere in the middle. Allies need not subscribe to the same worldview; they need only to further one another’s foreign policy objectives. Given the critical position the hostages will play in what could become a regional conflagration, a trusted mediator to the abductors takes on instrumental importance. Casting them out for insufficient side-ness would be self-defeating — and fatal.
In 2010, America began casting around for a Gulf ally to host an office for the Taliban, eager for peace talks to commence between the terror group and the Afghanistan government. America could then withdraw its troops from the long, costly war.
Qatar would become the Taliban’s host. But it was little known at the time this came at America’s instigation, or that the UAE also lobbied for the privilege. Despite peace talks collapsing, the office in Doha would still prove useful. In the 2021 U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan, holding sway with the Taliban, 40% of evacuees were moved from the country via Qatar through its support.
Earlier, in 2012, after Hamas backed the uprising against Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, they were forced to leave Damascus. The U.S. turned to Qatar. It did not do this for the preservation of Hamas. Instead, it recognized the group was a political reality that was not going to cease existing anytime soon.
The choice for Hamas was between Doha and Tehran, which had funded them and provided logistical support. Better they dwell in plain sight in Qatar, rather than in U.S. adversary Iran.
The communication link to Hamas through Doha has proved de-escalatory in the past. This time, it may or may not. But its existence at least gives mediation and the release of hostages a chance, rather than defaulting to all-out war.
Although the opening of both offices was not secret at the time, the circumstances that led to them were not well known. David Petraeus, the former U.S. general and CIA director, had to remind partners during the height of the Saudi and UAE-led blockade of Qatar that Doha hosted both Hamas and the Taliban at U.S. request.
The sensitive plays of diplomacy bear most chance of success when out of view. In the febrile information environment of today, binary outlooks, or public pressure based on them, put at risk the lines of communication with enemies and terrorists that are critical for global security.
If their utility is not easily distinguishable, such links become provocative: when peace seems distant, but a group is given safe haven in an ally; or when large-scale terror attacks occur. Hawks can easily paint a picture of consorting with the enemy, or capitulation.
Despite Mossad director David Barnea meeting Qatari officials in Doha earlier this month to discuss the hostage negotiations, Western public pressure had been building on Qatar’s Hamas office. But what does success for the hawks look like? Qatar’s chiding by Western allies? Hamas’ removal from the country?
Both would have ramifications for the future of conflict mediation. Gulf states, nor any other countries, will put themselves forward, knowing later they will be sold out by Western allies once facing public censure. Neither would a line of communication be open for the release of future hostages.
The oft-forgotten crux of mediation is that peace is made with enemies, not allies. Two adversaries must come together in agreement, something unfathomable in a binary framework. The alternative is to strive for obliteration of the other. Western foreign policy since 9/11 is testament to the failure of the latter. In the world of realpolitik, the less than ideal may well prove to be the closest to optimal.
First published in Haaretz, 22.11.2023
