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End of the Empire is a once-monthly feature on all news relating to the transition from the unipolar world of the US Empire to a multipolar world.
In an exclusive interview with CNN, Sheikh Mohammed bin-Abdulrahman al-Thani the Prime Minister of Qatar, described his nation as “enraged” at last Tuesday’s bombing by Israel in Doha, and added that there was now “no hope” for extricating the 20 or so remaining Israeli hostages from Hamas’ underground haunts.
“I think that what Netanyahu has done yesterday, he just killed any hope for those hostages. I was meeting one of the hostages’ families the morning of the attack. They are counting on this [ceasefire] mediation, they have no other hope for that,” Sheikh Mohammed said. “I have no words to express how enraged we are from such an action… this is state terror. We are betrayed”.
“Qatar’s prime minister told the White House his country would now re-evaluate its security partnership with Washington,” a source close to the PM told the US outlet Axios on Thursday.
The dust had barely settled, and the names of the dead had barely reached international headlines, before 3 Israeli officials came out and warned that future strikes could be authorized if Qatar didn’t turn over Hamas leadership, by which one can only assume they meant the ceasefire negotiating team, to Tel Aviv for a little summary Zionist justice.
Last month, WaL produced an analysis of the impacts that Israel and America’s brief bombing campaign on Iran has done to the fabric of international security. In a similar way, the Doha strike carried potential paradigm-shifting implications for the Gulf.
During President Trump’s first term in office, he managed to sign the Gulf states and Morocco onto an international agreement called the Abraham Accords, which bartered Israeli normalization in the eyes of these states for security guarantees and other bribes. It wasn’t long after these accords were signed that Netanyahu began boasting that there was now nothing stopping him from burying the two-state solution forever, and that the Palestinians would have neither land nor hope for the rest of time.
Analysts saw the Abraham Accords as the major influence that must have galvanized Hamas to commit the October 7th attacks. By losing their only regional sympathizers, no options remained but war.
The go-between
But now Qatar has suspended mediation efforts and may end relations altogether. Would taken together with the 23-month long siege turned-genocide in the Gaza Strip, the Abraham Accords will likely never be revived.
But Qatar was far more important to the US than just as a partner in the Abraham Accords. Qatar was willing and able to carry on several sensitive diplomatic efforts on behalf of both Tel Aviv and Washington with discretion and success. Trump relied on Qatar heavily as a mediator between his government and the Taliban to end the occupation of Afghanistan successfully. Qatar maintained the US diplomatic attaché to the subsequent Islamic government in Afghanistan. Qatar has also allowed the US to run several wars against other Islamic countries out of CENTCOM headquarters, located in the country.
Qatar has for years been the Likud Party’s mediators with Hamas. Netanyahu himself relied heavily on the Qataris to prop up Hamas at times when the group was bankrupt or losing popularity. The strategy allowed Netanyahu to avoid negotiations with the more moderate Palestinian Authority, and thus avoid any talks about a two-state solution. Then, the Qataris mediated the first major release of Israeli hostages of the genocide during the 2-month ceasefire to mark the holy month of Ramadan.
Trump would have almost certainly used the Qataris again to get the American-Israeli hostages released in advance of his entry into the Oval Office in late 2024. The Qataris were busy attempting to secure the release of the rest of the hostages when Israel bombed Doha.
For Israel to attack Qatar is indeed a betrayal, not only to Qatar but also to the US who have relied on the Qatari’s diplomacy as much if not more than Israel. From the Qatari point of view, it’s probably easier to see which betrayal stings more. Security guarantees under the Abraham Accords could not stop the US-armed-and-protected Israeli military from brazenly entering Qatar’s airspace with US-made F-35I fighter jets and bombing a civilian area, killing a member of the Qatari military police in the process of attempting to kill Hamas leaders that Qatar was hosting on Israel’s behalf.
Trump’s response has been described as weak and unsubstantial—even contradictory. At least publicly, the President has said nothing that would make Doha believe the US will reign in Israeli aggression in the region at all. They may just be the latest example of a trend in the region going back decades that America’s allies and partners in the region are useful until the very moment when they aren’t. WaL
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PICTURED ABOVE: CCTV footage of the explosion in Doha from the Israeli strike. PC: retrieved from Wikimedia.
