Reckoning Needed Between Terror-Sponsoring Qatar and United States

The emirate of Qatar continues to play an outsized role in the diplomatic efforts to end the war in Gaza. Over the weekend, these efforts once again failed to end the crisis and release the remaining 50 Israeli hostages taken by Hamas on October 7, 2023. This failure should not come as a surprise. Qatar has been a loyal patron to the terrorist group since 1999. The energy rich regime is more committed to the survival of its terror proxy in Gaza than it is to regional peace.

Qatar’s Support for Hamas Predates the Group’s Gaza Reign

Qatar’s support for Hamas predates the terrorist organization’s takeover of Gaza in 2007. When Jordan expelled Hamas in 1999, Qatar offered sanctuary to the group, which had already become notorious for using suicide bombing attacks over the previous decade. Qatar’s foreign minister said that Hamas officials were “welcome as guests in Qatar” but that Doha would “not allow any political activity from the country [sic].”

Hamas chose to relocate to Syria. However, that arrangement lasted for only a decade. With the outbreak of the Syrian civil war, the terror group found its way back to Qatar.  

This did not mean that Qatar pared back its support for the group.  In 2003, Hamas leaders reportedly convened in Qatar after the IDF attempted to eliminate Hamas founder Sheikh Ahmed Yassin following a Hamas suicide bombing in Jerusalem that killed seven people, including two American citizens.

This episode led to one of the first efforts by Qatar to advocate for its terror proxy. The regime in Doha stepped in and tried to negotiate an end to the second intifada (a campaign of terrorist attacks led by Hamas in Israel from 2000 to 2005) by asking Israel to refrain from targeting the terrorist group’s leaders. At the time, Israeli media reported that “Qatar has some influence on Hamas’ decision-making process, largely because a significant portion of the Islamic organization’s funds come from Qatari sources.”

Qatar Financed Hamas After the Group Seized Gaza

In 2006, Hamas swept the Palestinian elections that followed Israel’s unilateral withdrawal from Gaza the previous year. After a political standoff with the rival Palestinian faction Fatah, Hamas waged a bloody civil war and seized control of Gaza in 2007. Qatar sided with Hamas and endorsed the terrorist group’s power grab. In 2012, former Qatari Emir Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa Al Thani was the first world leader to visit Gaza under Hamas rule. The terrorist group welcomed Sheikh Hamad to the strip with fanfare. The government of Qatar pledged $400 million in assistance to the terrorist-controlled government now overseeing Gaza. A spokesman for Israel’s Foreign Ministry said the emir had “thrown peace under the bus” and that “most of the money that he’s pouring in Gaza will go to Hamas pockets, directly or indirectly.”

Thirteen years and five wars between Hamas and Israel later, Qatar’s support for Hamas has not waned. Qatar has pumped an estimated $1.8 billion into Hamas-run Gaza since 2012. In 2018, Doha began transferring an estimated $30 million per month to Gaza to purportedly help the Hamas government subsidize civil servant salaries. The Israeli government approved the transfers in a failed bid to prevent future wars. This would come back to haunt the Israelis in the wake of the October 7, 2023, Hamas-led atrocities.

Israel paused the suitcase deliveries after Hamas dragged Israel into an eleven-day war in May 2021. But Qatar found a workaround: in cooperation with Egypt, Qatar began providing fuel to Gaza that Hamas authorities could sell for cash. Within months, however, normal Qatari cash deliveries resumed.

Qatar Funded Hamas Terrorism

Since October 7, 2023, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) has recovered documents in Gaza that refute Qatar’s longstanding claim that no “aid has ever been delivered to Hamas’s political or military wing.” In 2019, Hamas political chief Ismail Haniyeh reportedly told Qatar’s foreign minister that Doha was “Hamas’s main artery” for fundraising. Haniyeh wrote to then-Hamas Gaza chief, Yahya Sinwar, in 2021 to tell him that Qatar’s emir had “agreed in principle to supply the resistance discreetly,” and that $11 million had already “been raised from the emir for the leadership of the movement.”

The documents support the Israeli Shin Bet internal security agency’s finding that “the flow of money from Qatar to Gaza and its delivery to Hamas’s military wing” enabled Hamas to amass offensive power and launch its October 7, 2023, attack. A group of veteran American and Israeli intelligence officials likewise concluded in April 2024 that “the vast majority of funds Qatar was sending to Gaza were going to assist Hamas’s terror infrastructure, weapons, and training.”

The Hamas Presence in Doha

In 2012, as the terrorist group moved its headquarters from Syria to Qatar,  Hamas chief Ismail Haniyeh gushed that “all of Doha is an office” for Hamas, “thanks to the love and cordiality that the Qatari leaders have provided for the Palestinians.”

To this day, Qatari officials maintain that the office came at the “request from Washington to establish indirect lines of communication with Hamas.” However, an Obama White House official asserted that there was never any request from Washington. Even after the October 7, 2023, Hamas slaughter of 1,200 Israelis and the kidnapping of 251, Qatar has continued to allow Hamas to operate on its soil.

Inexplicably, the United States government continues to rely on Qatar to negotiate for the release of the hostages held by Hamas, even as the regime hosts the terror group’s political elite — including Khaled Meshaal, whom the U.S. Department of Justice charged in September 2024 with terrorism, murder conspiracy, and sanctions evasion. Qatar, which was awarded the status of “major non-NATO ally” by Washington, has not offered to turn Meshaal over to U.S. authorities. This alone is a compelling reason for Congress to review Qatar’s status.

 A Reckoning is Needed

Qatar has long been identified as a jurisdiction of illicit finance benefitting a wide range of terrorist groups beyond Hamas, including the Taliban, Al-Qaeda, Islamic State, and others. The Persian Gulf emirate has somehow also found a way to fund American institutions of higher education, as well as K-12 schools across the country.  A reckoning is needed between our two countries. Congressional hearings, legislation, executive orders, and other measures to regulate relations between our countries are long overdue.