DOHA, Qatar – On the flight from Dubai to Doha, Emirates airline offers five new Israeli movies to watch. It is doubtful whether a European airline today could offer Israeli films on flights to a destination other than Israel without sparking protest. It seems that on Emirates, no one protests. I watched "Invictus," Clint Eastwood's wonderful movie about Nelson Mandela and Springboks, the racist South African rugby union team, with Hebrew subtitles on a flight between two Arab cities in the Persian Gulf. The new Middle East.
In this Middle East, Israel is mercilessly slaughtering residents of Gaza and hope for a deal that will put an end to this are pinned on Qatar, a Persian Gulf state that does not have diplomatic relations with Israel.
In recent years, Qatar has turned into Norway, Sweden or Switzerland: It is the global mediator, peacemaker and hostage liberator. Its hand is in almost everything. It tries to mediate between Venezuela and the United States, to effect a prisoner exchange between the United States and Iran, to rescue children who were abducted from Ukraine in Russia, to broker an agreement between the factions in Chad and, ofcourse the war and the hostages in Gaza.
The minister of state for foreign affairs, Mohammed Abdulaziz al-Khulaifi – His Excellency, per his introduction – was asked last week with whom did he breakfast yesterday and with whom will he sit in the hotel dining room tomorrow. His guests sometimes come here for months in order to forge peace or reach a settlement. He was the dean of Qatar University's law school before turning to politics and diplomacy. His master's and doctorate in law are from University of California, Berkeley, and his English reflects this. Like all the government officials you meet here, he is much more impressive than, for example, Foreign Minister Israel Katz.
The expensive watch worn by Hamed Khamis Al-Kubaisi is also impressive. He is the deputy secretary general of the national security council, and he devoted most of the time of the background conversation to frantic phone calls with his children's school. Something had happened there, and he was worried. The Qatari diplomat wanted to know if Benny Gantz would follow through on his threat to quit the government unless a postwar plan for Gaza is delivered by June 8. The level of resolution of the knowledge of Israeli current affairs is astonishing.
A different senior official, also His Excellency, explicitly said that within days the hostage talks are set to resume and perhaps an additional agreement will be reached, solely to prevent Gantz's resignation. They know Benjamin Netanyahu's duplicity well, and it seems they're fed up with it. There is no one to talk to in Israel, they say. Every time an issue is settled with Mossad chief David Barnea, it is followed by a reply: The prime minister did not give his approval. They were offended by Eli Cohen, Katz's predecessor; they have despaired of Netanyahu.
Officials in Doha reiterate that the funds transfers to Gaza were made via the Mossad, and therefore they view as false the accusations that Qatar delivered them for the construction of tunnels. Representatives of families of the Israeli hostages were also invited to last week's 2024 Global Security Forum, hosted by Qatar's Soufan Center.
The officials note that the original decision to provide a base for Hamas in Doha also followed an American request: Better that it be in Qatar than in Iran. In the VIP room at the airport in Doha, a Hamas delegation was ahead of me in line, Jibril Rajoub walked around the portico of the Sheraton Hotel and the hot name in the corridors regarding postwar Gaza is Mohammed Dahlan, who was born in Khan Yunis.
The prices are Israeli, the cleanliness Swiss, the heat Saharan. The Indians, Sri Lankans and Bangladeshis are knocked out by the heat. They are of course the absolute majority of the population here; Qataris account for only about 300,000 of the 2.7 million residents.
And in his spacious office, lined with bookshelves, in the Arab Center for Research and Policy Studies that he founded in Doha, sits the former Israeli lawmaker Azmi Bishara, who has already founded a TV station and a newspaper here, and who evokes nostalgia for another level of Israeli politicians. It's hard to be an exile at my age, he says with a sad smile.