Qatar should have “kicked Hamas out of Qatar, closed their bank accounts, and said there would be no more funds for Gaza in the future,” absent a deal to release the hostages, a senior diplomatic official has told The Jerusalem Post.
Only this kind of approach might have yielded a hostage deal a few weeks ago and kept the Qataris as the official moderators, as opposed to now, when Egypt may have displaced them, explained top Israeli sources.
The senior diplomatic official said that Qatar needed to take a much harder line with Hamas than it took “as a moral matter because Hamas are religious fanatics of the Muslim Brotherhood.”
Because Qatar failed to exercise any of the powerful pressure points that it had over Hamas in a serious manner, the “negotiations reached a dead end. So in recent weeks, the center of gravity shifted to Egypt. This is the moment when Qatar gave up ‘their ace in the hole.’ And they are very upset” to have lost out to Egypt as the mediator, “but there is nothing to do, they failed to nail down this last deal.”
Going backward to before October 7 and the early stage of the war, “Relations before negotiations over the hostage deal were good. They got much warmer after the first deal” of November 23-30.
“Sheikh [Qatari Prime Minister] Muhammad [bin Abdulrahman bin Jassim Al Thani] is very serious, and you can do business with him. He provided a starting point” where the endpoint was complex, said a top Israeli official.
At a certain point, Israel started to become impatient with the Qataris' slow pace, given that “we are talking about people’s lives. It is confusing, and they can see things in terms of being objects, and it can take forever,” said sources.
An Israeli source said that “he succeeded in the first negotiations. Relations were very close, and Egypt was very much in the background as a secondary player” during that earlier period.
However, during the recent failed negotiations leading into Ramadan, a senior diplomatic source said, “Qatar tried to close a deal, but there was no deal to be had on the table.”
They had two weeks of talks during which “they could have played all of their cards” against Hamas, but they did not, and “they didn’t get a deal. I don’t know if they have accepted” the reality of their failure, however much they may have tried to help, said the source.
Sources said that Al Thani recently felt sick either because of the Ramadan fast or because he took losing the hostage negotiations file very hard.
A senior diplomatic source said, “He understands he failed. We switched to Egypt. They are moving the negotiations well; I am not sure; they may still fail, but they are moving it forward.”
“They didn’t see the urgency. They were acting as if it was a negotiation over buying an apartment. Still, we need to get the hostages back after several months of living in tunnels with insufficient food” and horrible conditions. “The bottom line is he didn’t seal the deal,” said top Israeli sources.
Sources said that they had told Al Thani, “We will use the UAE and the Saudis to go into Gaza before we use your money” for the future rebuilding plans if they did not come through with another hostage deal.
Typically, Al Thani responds to such threats, saying that “the UAE and the Saudis won’t pay, so you will come back to me.”
A source said, “Maybe we will end up asking, but you [Qatar] will still be the last in line.”
Sources said that Saudi Crown Prince Mohammad Bin Salman and UAE leader Mohammad Bin Zayid have deep pockets and will eventually send funds where they should go.
They said that “maybe the Saudis and the UAE may not love the idea of investing in Gaza, but some nice words from the US, the EU, and Israel, and they will do it. It’s not even considered significant money for them. It’s not significant money for Qatar, either. Can I guarantee it? I cannot guarantee it.”
Regarding the Qatari claim that if they kicked out Hamas, the terror group would quickly move to Turkey without losing anything, a senior diplomatic source said, “The best comeback for a serial violator of international law is: someone else will sell to me.”
“So send them to Turkey. Then Turkey will need to kick them out. These are monsters. I am not sure even Turkey will take them now because [after October 7] they will harm Turkey’s reputation.”
Further, the diplomatic official stated, “Until now, Qatar wasn’t saying” that it could not expel Hamas because they could go to Turkey; rather, Qatar was saying if Hamas is expelled, “there won’t be negotiations. Before, maybe this was true. But already now, we can do negotiations without them, with Egypt, even if they expel Hamas.”
A source said, “They are a group of monsters. They approved mass killing, raping, and burning to death. I do not understand how they [Qatar] can host them.”
“Qatar supported Hamas for many years. It cannot be ignored. The Qatari money was also used for good things and also for evil things,” said a top Israeli official.
In addition, top Israeli officials expressed frustration that Ismail Haniyeh and the other Hamas officials in Qatar are no longer the real powers. Given that Gaza Chief Yahya Sinwar has overwhelming power over whether there is a deal, and he is in Gaza, the “advantage” of being close to Hamas leaders who are out of the loop is no longer an advantage.
This could also connect to the process in which Hamas’s Doha officials needed 36-48 hours each time to hear back from Sinwar, making them and Qatar seem less useful.
An October negotiation?
The Qataris told The Jerusalem Post’s Zvika Klein that there was a deal on the table back in October for a return of all of the Israeli hostages even before Israel invaded Gaza.
Essentially, the Israeli response would be not to take this claim very seriously.
Top Israeli sources said that at most, maybe there was an offer to return Israeli civilians, but definitely not an offer to return all of the hostages, which include captured Israeli soldiers.
Moreover, a senior diplomatic official implied that the premise of any Qatar-Hamas offer in October would have been a partial return of Israeli hostages for thousands of Palestinian security prisoners while leaving Hamas in charge of Gaza as if it had not just killed 1,200 mostly Israeli civilians and invaded 22 Israeli border towns and cities.
In contrast, the Israeli government would not have entertained any deal that would leave Hamas and all of its military threats in place, given that in the early days after October 7, the Israeli messaging was that it would “annihilate Hamas” (the more moderate verbiage of toppling, or merely “dismantling” came weeks or months later).
There is still some confusion about Qatar’s claim of making a viable offer to return Israeli hostages already in early-mid October.
Some officials said that they were not sure if such an offer was even made because Israel was in crisis mode, for several days still repelling invaders, then preparing for an invasion, and there were so many issues being handled.
They said, “I don’t think there was a negotiation or there was any offer we could accept. Think about the situation in Israel at the time. How could we discuss this?” with Qatar about a deal that would have left Hamas in place as the rulers of Gaza as if nothing had happened.
In other words, the idea that Israel might have “missed” a viable deal is viewed by these sources as a convenient Qatari fiction.
As further proof of the Israeli narrative, a senior diplomatic official said, “If they had kept their side of the November deal, then Hamas would have gotten a few more days of a respite. But after only seven days, they proved they were two-faced. If we had not kept up crazy pressure on them that whole week, things could have gone back to the war each day.”
The bottom line from the Israeli side is that given that 1) Hamas allowed the November deal to fall apart on the eighth day, rather than extending it; 2) Hamas tried several times to tamper with the deal even before then; 3) and that this was after Israel had much more leverage by having taken Gaza City, there was no way Hamas would have followed through on a deal back in October (when Israel had no leverage and had lost its deterrence reputation) that would be qualitatively close to what it agreed to later.
The bottom line was that sources did not think that Hamas would have agreed if Israel had offered additional days of no attacks for another 30 hostages being freed.
“And I don’t think it was close to what we are discussing today,” said a source.
Going forward, a senior diplomatic official expressed hope that there could be a new hostage deal to return 40 hostages in around three weeks – “but this is just a hope, and not a promise,” they said.
No Israeli sources will go on record, but several top Israeli and US sources have confirmed to The Jerusalem Post off the record that if Israel gets back another 40 hostages out of the more than 130 in Hamas’s hands, there probably would only be another 30-40 left to get back, with the other 50-60 no longer alive.
A variety of Mossad, IDF, Shin Bet, and Prime Minister's Office officials have been involved in the hostages issue.