Now that all parties have signed on to President Donald Trump’s peace plan between Israel and Hamas, the civilized part of the world awaits the implementation of phase one, the release of all remaining Israeli and foreign hostages who have been held by Hamas in unspeakable conditions for two years, as well as the return of those who have been murdered in captivity. At least on the face of it, this is indeed a remarkable agreement because of the many ways in which it makes a break with longstanding Middle East history. The most significant thing about the deal is that an unprecedented number of major players, including the EU, all of the signatories of the Abraham Accords, as well as Egypt, Qatar, Turkey, Pakistan, and Indonesia — the last three being the largest Muslim-majority states — have signed on. But we must be clear about one thing: Neither Hamas nor Qatar and Turkey would have bought into this deal if Israel had not been on the verge of decisively defeating Hamas in Gaza.
Practically speaking, the hostages are all that Hamas had left to fight the war in Gaza. Israel is now in the process of keeping its side of the bargain by releasing a specified number of prisoners and detainees — this is regrettable but at this point can’t be helped if Israel is to show good faith to President Trump. As usual, during the negotiations, Hamas prevaricated and stalled to show to its fans around the world that it was still in control of the process. But even if the terrorists do not willingly follow through on phase two, which is to lay down their arms, then with the hostages out of harm’s way, Israel will force them to do so. Only, in that case, more Israeli soldiers as well as Gazans — mainly terrorists — will die. Either way, the war will then be over and so will the cry of “genocide” by the world’s Israel haters because, at that point, the final reckoning will show that only a tiny fraction of Gazans had died, an unprecedented historically low number given the conditions of this war.
There are other details of the deal that are interesting if not presently disturbing, including the role of both the Palestinian Authority and the UN in the future rebuilding and governance of the Gaza Strip, but they are not decisively important because they do not materially change the overall security situation in Gaza or the overall direction leading to the unfolding of peace in the Middle East. The biggest problem with the deal is not the thing itself but the side deal that Trump made with Qatar. On Sept. 29, after Trump and Netanyahu had signed the deal, Trump also signed an executive order stating that the United States had entered a joint defense pact with Qatar, which basically states that if Qatar were attacked, presumably by Israel, it would be regarded as an attack on the United States.
Qatar needs this pact and needs it desperately because all of its neighbors, not only the Jewish state, fear and loath her. Recently at an International Institute for Counter-Terrorism Policy conference at Reichman University, Udi Levi, the former head of the Mossad’s Economic Warfare and Financial Intelligence Division, warned that Qatar’s project is nothing less than civilizational: “Qatar has built, is building and will continue to build every possible infrastructure to change the West culturally, socially and economically, in order to fulfill the Muslim Brotherhood’s doctrine of restoring the Islamic empire.” According to the finance division of Mossad, Qatar, as a financier, is at least as much a state sponsor of terrorism as is Iran.
It must be remembered that in its “civilizational project,” Qatar is also and has long been at war with America. Khalid Sheikh Mohammed — colloquially known as KSM — along with Osama bin Laden masterminded the 9/11 terrorist attack on America. From 1992–1996, this arch-terrorist lived in Qatar under the patronage of the Qatari Minister of Awqaf Abdallah bin Khaled Al Thani, who is a member of the Qatari ruling family. KSM was given an apartment and a no-show job in the Ministry of Electricity and Water and spent his time traveling widely, making contacts with other terrorists, and planning his various terrorist activities. He was the mastermind of over 30 terrorist attacks, including the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center and the 2002 beheading of American journalist Daniel Pearl. KSM was finally captured on March 1, 2003. However, in 1996, when the FBI arrived to arrest him in Doha, the capital of Qatar, having alerted only the Royal Palace of their intentions, KSM had already fled.
When the U.S. assassinated Osama bin Laden, the other mastermind of 9/11, the Navy Seal team that did the job recovered a huge trove of intelligence, including 10 computer hard drives, sundry documents, including bin Laden’s personal correspondence, a number of DVDs, almost a hundred thumb drives, and a dozen cell phones. After the operation had been completed, there were many FOIA requests by a large number of major media outlets, including the Associated Press, Judicial Watch, Politico, and Fox News for photographic or DNA evidence of his demise. However, the Obama administration refused to release it. When they were consequently sued by these outlets, Obama-appointed Judge James Boasberg of the D.C. district court ruled that the Department of Defense was not required to release these materials. Moreover, after Boasberg’s ruling, all records were transferred to the CIA and erased from DOD files and, due to the so-called CIA Operational Files exemption, are now legally exempt from Freedom of Information requests. Given that Qatar is a known funder of al Qaeda and its affiliates, it is almost certain that her fingerprints are all over this trove of intelligence.
Trump knows this, or ought to know this. So why has he thus allied himself with Qatar against Israel? To be clear, Trump’s executive order is not a treaty. Nor does it have the force of Article 5 of the NATO pact, which requires all members to come to the aid of any one that has been attacked. It is unthinkable that if Israel were once again to attempt to assassinate Hamas leaders on Qatari soil that the U.S. would then declare war on the Jewish state.
So, what’s Trump’s EO all about?
It could just be a concession demanded by Qatar given that, during his trade tour of the Middle East, Trump made deals with the emirate worth $1.2 trillion in aviation, defense, and energy contracts with American companies over the next 10 years. These contracts will create hundreds of thousands of American jobs in these sectors. One cannot blame Trump for being pleased about that, but at what price? It’s a huge sum, but America has spent a lot more than that in blood and treasure fighting foes that Qatar has been funding.
Qatar is the seat of Wahabism, the most extreme and fundamental form of of Islam. Because of this, her more moderate and secular Muslim neighbors fear and loathe her not as a kinetic belligerent but as an actor who is working to destabilize and overthrow their own regimes. Next to Iran, Qatar has long been the greatest force of destabilization in the region, and, because of her “civilization project,” also in the world at large. Daniel Pipes, head of the Middle East Forum, has repeatedly said that the only way that radical Islam can be defeated is if the Muslim religion reforms itself. This is happening, perhaps too slowly for Western tastes, but it is indeed going on, as testified by the signatories to the Abraham Accords. The Twelve Day War has greatly weakened Iran — it is now even suffering from water shortages — and Turkey, with its failing economy and large but crappy army. With its vast, almost infinite supply of petrodollars, Qatar is now the strongest state trying to pull the Muslim world back towards barbarism.
In this tug-of-war, the stakes are huge. That being said, Qatar needs America more than America needs Qatar. Trump may be playing 3D chess, but so too is Qatar, as it is well known in the region for playing the dual role of “arsonist and firefighter.” Before Oct. 7, Israel too was taken in by Qatar’s blandishments as a frenemy and allowed the emirate to send huge sums of money to Gaza in the vain hope that kindness would buy peace. Oct. 7 was a wake-up call for Israel, and it now regards Qatar in unqualified terms as its enemy. Quantitatively, Oct. 7 was for Israel equivalent to 14 9/11 attacks on the United States, but qualitatively it was much worse than that because of the sadistic, personal, and triumphal way it was carried out, with broadcasting of the atrocities by the terrorists in real time. Aside from 9/11, Qatar’s proxies have killed many other Americans, including some of the hostages taken on Oct. 7. One would like to think that one 9/11 would be enough of a wake-up all for any nation, including America.
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