I have long been wondering about Qatar’s willingness to host Hamas’ leadership post-10/7.
As non-Western as Qatar is, the Emirate has been working assiduously to court Western approval and is hardly a radical Islamist state. This is not to suggest the regime is liberal or Liberal, but rather that they aren’t exactly Iranian-style fanatics. The state is pretty much what you would expect in a country that is in a dangerous region filled with radicals but with an elite who are Western-educated and resolutely capitalist.
I had long suspected that Western governments had given implicit approval for Qatar’s hosting of the radical Islamist terrorist group’s leaders in order to use it as a back-channel to Hamas.
Maybe the US thought the Qatar/Hamas relationship would yield the release of the hostages. But it’s been more than five months and 134 Israelis are still held in Gaza. It’s…