Gaza Conflict Spotlights Role of Qatar, the Hamas-Funding U.S. Ally

…

“Qatar is a very strange place. They rely on the U.S. for protection and invest heavily in the U.S.,” said Jonathan Schanzer, vice president for research at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD), noting that the U.S. has its largest Mideast airbase—Al-Udeid Air Base—in Qatar.

“[But] at the same time, just miles away from [the airbase], you can find the head of Hamas (Khaled Mashal), and there was even a Taliban embassy there for a while too. All of these things make for a foreign-policy anomaly,” Schanzer told JNS.org.

…

FDD’s Schanzer blamed the growing Arab rift, which is largely between U.S. allies in the Middle East, on the lack of strong U.S. leadership in the region.

“The White House right now is doing its best to extricate itself from the Middle East,” he said.

“We are setting a low bar for our allies; we are not demanding a certain level of responsibility [such as demanding that countries not support terrorist groups like Hamas]. The fact that we allow this is troubling,” added Schanzer.

…

“[The Qataris] are supporting a very violent non-state actor (Hamas),” Schanzer said. “A lot of people ignore Qatar’s ideological leanings. But at the end of the day, even though they are nominally allied with the United States, they are Islamist at their core.”

…