A day after more than ten Israeli fighter jets on Tuesday bombarded a meeting of Hamas leaders in the Qatarese capital Doha, the Emir of the United Arab Emirates and the crown princes of Kuwait and Jordan flew to Qatar to express their support. Mohammed Bin Salman, Crown Prince and de facto leader of Saudi Arabia, is also expected to visit Doha on Thursday.
The attack of Israel in Qatar is a shock for the region. In the first place Qatar himself: Prime Minister Mohammed bin Abdulrahman al-thani spoke on Wednesday in an interview with CNN of “betrayal” by Israel. He described the bombing as “state styer.” Moreover, according to him, all hope for releasing Israeli hostages in Gaza has passed away. As a mediator in the war in Gaza, Al-thanto had spoken with family members of the hostages on the morning of the attack.
It remains unclear whether the Hamas leaders died in the Israeli attack. Al-Hhani, however, announced that a 22-year-old Qatarese security guard was killed. According to the prime minister, the ‘barbaric’ action of Israel cannot remain unanswered. He hopes for a “collective answer from the region”.
According to him, a “Arab-Islamic Top” will follow in the coming days where a possible regional response is considered. The Qatarese channel Al Jazeera reports that countries “investigate legal possibilities to try Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for breaking international law.”
Depending on USA
It is not surprising that other Arab countries and especially Golf States are very concerned about Israel’s attack on Qatar. Many of them, just like Qatar, depend on the United States for their safety – but Washington could or did not want to prevent Israel to struck on Tuesday.
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“Since the war between Iran and Israel in June, golf countries have been spoken about Israel as a threat to regional stability,” says Kristian Coates Ulrichsen, a regional expert affiliated with American Rice University. “That is language that used to be used alone when it came to Iran.”
“People wonder what the next red line is to exceed Israel,” says Ulrichsen. “Is there anyone else in the Golf safe? There is a delegation of Houthi rebels in Oman. Is it going to bomb it now?”
In Golflanden, Israel is discussed as a threat to regional stability
The regional shock is all the greater because the Americans have tried to intensify military cooperation between their Arab allies in recent years. The military headquarters where that cooperation is coordinated is in Qatar, only miles from the residential area in Doha where Israel carried out his air raid on Tuesday.
The house of Hamas in Qatar was also a request from the US from 2012, when the Syria group was deported at the start of the civil war. “The Americans would prefer that a group was in a place where they could be kept a crush on it,” said Ulrichsen. “Instead of disappearing to Russia or Iran.”
Army base
The attack of Israel – less than three months after his archenemen Iran Iran bombarded the US army base in Qatar with rockets – the Qatarans therefore wonder whether their relationship with the US is still useful, says David Roberts, affiliated with King’s College London.
“Qatar is a small country on a gigantic gas field in a region with a lot of conflict,” says Roberts. For that reason, it invests generously in his relationship with the US. For example, by housing so many American soldiers, giving Trump an expensive aircraft as a gift and at the same time purchasing nearly one hundred billion dollars to Boeing aircraft.
The fact that Trump on Tuesday told reporters to be ‘not enthusiastic’ about the attack of Israel will not remove the frustration at Qatar and other Gulf States. “The relationships in the Middle East are shifting,” says Ulrichsen. Where countries in the Golf look up each other in resistance to Israeli aggression. Exactly the opposite of what both Trump and his predecessor Joe Biden wanted to achieve with the Abraham agreements, who had to normalize the relations between Israel and the Arab allies of the US.
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