Playing arsonist and firefighter: How the West is falling for Qatar’s deadly game

All the while, Doha-based Al Jazeera news network relentlessly pumps vitriolic Hamas propaganda around the world. This is the same channel that gave a programme to Yusuf al-Qaradawi, the Muslim Brotherhood’s spiritual leader, who endorsed the tactic of suicide bombings but was still regularly welcomed as the guest of honour at events hosted by Qatari Emir Tamim bin Hamad bin Khalifa Al-Thani.

As the atrocities of 7th October were unfolding, Hamas leaders were filmed celebrating in their luxury Doha quarters. This chilling footage may have long-since been forgotten by most, but for the State of Israel it left an indelible mark and signalled that a new security paradigm was required.

Hamas’ leaders have been on borrowed time ever since. Israel’s security and military apparatus have successfully hunted and eliminated Hamas’ leaders one by one, with daring strikes in Tehran, Damascus and amidst the grinding house-to-house combat Hamas has imposed in Gaza.

For all their apparent outrage over Israel’s attacks, the leaders of Western capitals would do well to consider how their actions have enabled Qatar to execute their double game of promoting extremism across the world, while positioning itself as a key strategic ally. This hybrid war against Western interests has been conducted in plain sight.

In the UK, Qatar’s influence permeates wherever you look. Its Royal Family now reportedly own more of London than King Charles. Qatar owns or holds significant stakes in British icons such as Harrods and The Shard, as well as critical national infrastructure. Its investment in Heathrow, the UK’s nuclear energy sector and even major supermarkets like Sainsbury’s guarantees Qatar immense clout on the corridors of Whitehall. For years, the UK’s electricity grid was even kept going by Qatari gas imports. Here is the kicker though – Qatar has simultaneously pumped tens of millions of pounds into British universities and Islamic Centres, allowing it to advance its corrosive ideology.

Mirrored across the West, this dramatic inflow of cash has guaranteed Qatar’s outsized role in regional diplomacy, as well as shaping how Western capitals hopelessly try to shape events in the Middle East.

Qatar has been playing the UK for fools. Its brokering of ceasefire talks may have been praised but in reality, Doha has been using them to engineer its own pro-Muslim Brotherhood agenda. It is much like the arsonist who also tries to play the role of a firefighter.

Israel’s political leadership have grown weary of allied countries demanding it negotiates with Hamas even when the group has rejected ceasefire deals time and again. Unlike those governments happy to merely proscribe terror groups in distant lands, Israel doesn’t have the luxury of geography and has again embarrassed grandstanding Western leaders by taking the difficult but necessary actions required to keep one’s country safe.

Despite the indignant public statements from regional actors, Qatar’s Western-oriented Sunni Arab neighbours are certainly no fans of Hamas and have long held grievances with Qatar for its destabilisation of their countries during the Muslim Brotherhood’s hijacking of the Arab Spring in the 2010’s. Saudi Arabia’s unofficial ties with Israel have withstood the tragic events of the last two years and driven by a determination to move beyond the region’s history of extremism and bloodshed, they seek the ending of this conflict as a pathway to expanding the Abraham Accords with the Jewish State.

With a new Middle East emerging, the UK and its allies need to urgently reconsider their relationships with Qatar or they risk being left behind and becoming ever more irrelevant. They would do well to remember that Qatar’s legitimacy is dependent upon the West, and that it was their short-sighted thirst for Qatari gold that led us to this mess.

For too long, Qatar has been permitted to pursue and gain from a regional strategy premised on support for extremism and fanning the flames of Islamist sedition and violence. Israel last week demonstrated the intrinsic limits of such a strategy – it only works for as long as its victims acquiesce to it. Israel has now made clear that it will no longer play its allotted role. Western governments would be well advised to do the same.

Jonathan Spyer is a journalist and Middle East specialist, and director of research at the Middle East Forum