Around the time of its intervention in Syria, Moscow began offering itself as an arbiter in the conflict between the Jewish state and the Palestinians, in 2016 offering to host Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and the Palestinian Authority (PA) president Mahmoud Abbas for a summit in Moscow. More recently, the Kremlin has been trying to broker an agreement between Abbas’s Fatah faction and the Hamas regime in Gaza, and reportedly had a hand in the rival groups’ joint press conference earlier this month. Oved Lobel comments:

On September 14, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and his Qatari counterpart met and signed an agreement on cultural exchange, followed by an official statement from Foggy Bottom about “shared ideas of tolerance.” Since then, there have also been reports that the U.S. is considering awarding the peninsular monarchy the status of a major non-NATO ally, and even that Doha will be next in line to normalize its relations with Israel. The fact remains, however, that the Qatari educational system is rife with anti-Semitic indoctrination. Moreover, argues Efraim Inbar, it would be strategically foolish for Washington to reward Qatar with upgraded relations: