The U.S. played a direct role in helping set up the Hamas office in Qatar during the Obama administration, seeking appeasement and soft diplomacy but ultimately failing to control the terrorist group as it festered in Gaza.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u2018For many years now, both the United States and Israel have been living in a policy fantasy world where we have tolerated Hamas\u2019 existence in Doha and believed that Doha would be a moderating influence,\u2019 Richard Goldberg, the coordinator for the Trump administration\u2019s maximum pressure campaign on Iran, told Fox News Digital.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u2018That thesis was disproven on Oct. 7, so whatever has happened in the last few years, it doesn\u2019t matter because Oct. 7 now stands as the new reality,\u2019 Goldberg, also senior adviser at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, said. \u2018It disproves anybody\u2019s hypotheses that Hamas would somehow become a governing entity, not a terrorist group.\u2019<\/p>\n
Qatar\u2019s Ambassador to Washington Meshal bin Hamad Al\u00a0Thani wrote in a Wall Street Journal op-ed that his government set up the Hamas political office in Doha \u2018after a request from Washington to establish indirect lines of communication\u2019 in 2012. He claimed the office \u2018frequently\u2019 served in mediation efforts and helped de-escalate conflicts between Israel and the Palestinian territories.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u2018The presence of the Hamas office shouldn\u2019t be confused with endorsement but rather establishes an important channel for indirect communication,\u2019 the minister wrote.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The State Department told Fox News Digital that \u2018Qatar is an influential actor, especially when there are limited conduits of communication with groups like the Taliban and Hamas,\u2019 adding that the U.S. continues \u2018actively working with Qatar to secure the release of hostages held by Hamas and Secretary (Antony) Blinken expressed appreciation for their help in this effort\u2019 while stressing that Blinken \u2018has repeatedly condemned Hamas\u2019 unconscionable acts of brutality and made clear that there can be no more business as usual with Hamas.\u2019<\/p>\n
The Qatari Hamas liaison office has played a role in helping secure the release of 50 hostages in exchange for 150 Palestinian prisoners and a four-day ceasefire. Qatar first announced the agreement once both parties had finalized it last week.<\/p>\n
Fox News Digital confirmed with a former Obama administration State Department official that the U.S. did request the establishment of the Hamas office, but Goldberg and Steven Simon, a senior director on the National Security Council (NSC) for the Middle East and North Africa during the Obama administration, said the U.S. merely supported the office\u2019s establishment in Doha.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u2018Hamas was going to go somewhere, and the Qataris wanted to host it,\u2019 Simon told Fox News Digital. \u2018Of course, it was discussed with the United States, and we said, \u2018go ahead.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
Goldberg argued that the Doha office was \u2018clearly a policy that was already in line with the Obama administration\u2019s thinking of how to remake the Middle East in a Muslim Brotherhood image, and the Qataris played right into that.\u2019\u00a0<\/p>\n
He explained that the Qataris viewed it as taking their \u2018longtime client Hamas\u2019 and seeking to \u2018help moderate them and help separate them from the Iranians,\u2019 selling it as a \u2018win-win for everybody.\u2019\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u2018Well, 11 years later, we\u2019re paying a very, very high price for that fatal mistake of allowing Doha to sell us on this route, and if we do not finally reverse this policy and shut down Qatari support for Hamas, we are guaranteeing ourselves more and more Oct. 7 [attacks] to come in the future,\u2019 Goldberg said.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Simon, who now teaches Middle Eastern studies at the University of Washington and serves as a research fellow at the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, stressed that the Qataris saw the office as a chance to enhance their standing and role in the Middle East and strengthen relations with the U.S.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u2018I think there was broad agreement, first of all, that there was no point in trying to block Qatar from hosting these guys\u2026 but there might be an advantage to it, and certainly that was the Israeli perspective because the Israelis were using the Qataris as a cut-out to deal with Hamas,\u2019 Simon explained.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u2018Hamas leadership needed a place where it had unfettered access to media, to communications and simple infrastructure of care and feeding, and a place, of course, where they would be safe, and Doha was a great place for that,\u2019 he lamented. \u2018They would have found a comfortable environment \u2014 that the people they dealt with on a day-to-day basis, the Qatari government in particular, would be comfortable dealing with them.\u2019\u00a0<\/p>\n
Simon argued that hosting Hamas also gave Qatar a chance to \u2018poke\u2019 its regional rivals, the Saudis and Emirates, \u2018in the eye with a sharp stick\u2019 because they stood against the Muslim Brotherhood, out of which Hamas eventually developed.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u2018So it sort of worked in terms of intra-Gulf rivalries\u2026 then, it works for Qatar because they, like a lot of these smaller Gulf states, fancies itself a big player, and here was a chance to be a big player because they were a pivotal factor in the policy arena involving Israel and the United States, among others,\u2019 he added. \u2018They had leverage. They had some juice, and they kind of liked that.\u2019\u00a0<\/p>\n
Neither Simon nor Goldberg were able to speak about how much and to what degree their respective administrations made use of this office. Fox News Digital also reached out to several other senior State and NSC officials from the Obama and Trump administrations, all of whom either declined to comment or did not respond to a request for comment by the time of publication.\u00a0<\/p>\n
However, both Simon and Goldberg noted that the Oct. 7 attack on Israel has changed the attitudes toward the office and Qatar\u2019s role. Simon pointed out that Qatar still plays an important role as Hamas continues to negotiate to release some of the over 200 hostages still in their possession, but that after the attack \u2018you could see the transformation of attitudes.\u2019\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u2018They\u2019re in crisis management mode, they\u2019re in damage limitation mode,\u2019 he stressed, saying that there will be an effort to \u2018salvage\u2019 the value of the office going forward \u2014 whatever that might look like.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Goldberg diverged on this point, arguing that the U.S. has to seek an end to the Doha office, using what leverage Washington has with Qatar. \u00a0<\/p>\n
\u2018There has to be a policy decision that we will no longer tolerate a state sponsor or safe harbor for Hamas, period,\u2019 Goldberg argued. \u2018If that is the policy of the United States, the next question is: What are the consequences for any state that violates that policy?\u2019<\/p>\n
Among the options he suggested, including a pathway for American victims of the Oct. 7 attack to sue Hamas \u2014 along the lines of the pathway provided to 9\/11 victim families to sue Saudi Arabia \u2014 Goldberg believes that the U.S. should move its air base out of Doha and drop the non-NATO ally status provided to Qatar last year.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u2018We are not stuck there. We have other options in the region,\u2019 he said. \u2018I\u2019m sure other Gulf countries who want major strategic defense commitments from the U.S. would happily pay for the relocation of our forces to their country.\u2019\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u2018We should absolutely start that process, no matter what,\u2019 he continued. \u2018We do not need to be there. They do not have us over a barrel\u2026 the Qataris believe that we are owned by them because we have a base there. They deserve a wake-up call.\u2019\u00a0<\/p>\n
Ambassador Al Thani blasted those who would criticize Qatar for its role in the conflict, arguing that \u2018commentators\u2019 have made \u2018untrue\u2019 assertions that Qatar has funded and sponsored Hamas.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u2018These narratives create obstacles for constructive mediation efforts and aim to derail negotiations,\u2019 the ambassador wrote in his Wall Street Journal piece. \u2018Almost as soon as the conflict began, Qatar became the target of a sustained disinformation campaign about the nature of our role as a mediator for peace in the region.\u2019<\/p>\n
\u2018The release of several hostages over the past week shows that Qatar\u2019s policy of engaging with all sides can yield positive results,\u2019 he wrote, referring to the first two hostages released in the conflict last month. \u2018Avoiding the further loss of civilian lives and securing the release of hostages should be the priority for all. Open channels of communication can lead to lasting peace.\u2019<\/p>\n
The spokesman for the Qatari embassy in Washington, D.C., and the spokesman for the foreign ministry in Doha\u00a0did not respond to repeated requests for comment from Fox News Digital by the time of publication.<\/p>\n\n
The U.S. played a direct role in helping set up the Hamas office in Qatar during the Obama administration, seeking appeasement and soft diplomacy but ultimately failing to control the terrorist group as it festered in Gaza.\u00a0 \u2018For many years now, both the United States and Israel have been living in a policy fantasy world <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":12096,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[25],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-12095","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-politics"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12095","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12095"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12095\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/12096"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12095"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12095"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12095"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}