Fourteen Republican U.S. senators urged the Secretary of State Antony Blinken and the Attorney General Merrick Brian Garland to push Qatar to extradite the senior Hamas exponent Khaled Meshal to the United States to try him for his involvement in the killing of American citizens on October 7, 2023. Meshal, who boasts assets of around four billion dollars and lives in Doha, has held the position of head of the political bureau of the Palestinian terrorist movement from 1996 to 2017. In 2021 he was chosen to head the Hamas office for Palestinian refugees and exiles and after the assassination in 2024 of Ismail Haniyeh, who had replaced him as head of the political bureau, Khaled Meshaal became the most senior official of Hamas which is the armed wing of the Muslim Brotherhood, outside the Gaza Strip. The operation implemented by the American senators shows that the objective of the United States is to have the last leaders of Hamas expelled from the emirate and for Qatar the time has therefore come to make choices which are certainly not simple because if it takes sides against Hamas it denies everything done and spent to date (tens of billions of dollars that have gone to Hamas and into the pockets of its leaders), and would create a rift with the Muslim Brotherhood who have long found a home and even a broadcaster in Qatar television like Al Jazeera born and modeled on the thinking of the brotherhood.
But something about the relationship between Qatar and Hamas is rapidly changing so much so that Qatarhas decided to withdraw from its mediation between Israel and Hamas after months of futile efforts to end the war in the Gaza Strip. The news, which was announced to international news agencies by a diplomatic source, was subsequently confirmed by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Gulf State. The spokesperson Majed Al Ansari he explained that his country will resume its efforts as a mediator “only when the parties show their availability and seriousness”. Another issue on the table is the presence of the leaders of Hamas in Qatar and in this sense last week some rumors spread according to which the time in Doha for the Qatari leaders had now expired and for this reason «the Hamas political office in Doha no longer has any reason to exist.” The news was later denied, however, it is not yet clear whether the location will be closed. A Hamas official told AFP that “no request to leave Qatar has been received” but for some time Hamas men have started talks with a series of governments such as Tunisia, Algeria, Turkey and obviously Iran to move to.
Since November 2023, with the support of the United States and Egypt, Qatar, which has been financing Hamas for decades and which is therefore co-responsible for the massacres of 7 October 2023, has played a mediation role between the parties in conflict, facilitating a truce of week that allowed the release of hostages in Gaza in exchange for Palestinian prisoners held by Israel. Since then, various negotiation attempts have produced no results due to Hamas’ opposition to any possible agreement. Washington has told Qatar that Hamas’ presence in Doha is no longer acceptable since the Palestinian militant group rejected its latest proposal for a ceasefire and hostage deal, a US official said Friday.
It is unlikely that Qatar can say no to the United States given that the Al Udeid air base, located in the desert south-west of Doha, is the largest US military installation in the Middle East which can host around 10 thousand US soldiers. For years, Al Udeid has been the center of operations of the Central Command of the US Armed Forces in Afghanistan, near Iran and more generally in the Middle East and its presence effectively protects Qatar. It is clear that the Mossad is following all this with great interest given that Benjamin Netanyahu he has repeatedly announced “that he wants to eliminate his enemies wherever they are” which promptly happened with Ismail Haniyeh killed in Tehran on 31 July 2024, with Mohammad Deif deputy military leader of Hamas in the Gaza Strip reduced to dust by a drone on 13 July 2024 in Kahn Youns, and more recently (16 October 2024) with the death of Yahya Sinwar (who had replaced Ismail Haniyeh), killed by IDF troops in Tal as Sultan while trying to escape to Egypt. To them must be added dozens of military commanders and thousands of terrorists.
The same fate befell the Hebollah with the killing of the leader Hassan Nasrallah (+September 27, 2024), and to several prominent leaders of the pro-Iranian Shiite group who were killed by the Israeli army in the past year. In recent weeks, in addition to the historic leader, Nabil Kawak, Muhammad Ismail, Hussein Ismail, Muhammad Qabisi, Abbas Ibrahim Sharaf Ad-Din, Hussein Hany, Ali Karaki and Muhammad Hussein Srour, all involved in the attacks on Israel from Lebanon, were also eliminated. Earlier, during the summer, he was killed Fuad ShukrNasrallah’s senior advisor on military affairs and considered the organization’s number two. It is clear that for the leaders of Hamas who spend their lives accumulating millions of dollars stolen from the Palestinian people and who live like nabobs in Doha, leaving the gas emirate that has protected and financed them for decades is equivalent to a death sentence but the impression is that the hourglass that marks time is no longer on their side.
