Yesterday evening, the ongoing talks in Cairo to arrange a Palestinian-prisoners-for-Israeli-hostages deal appear to have broken down decisively. Yigal Carmon argues that to free Israelis from Hamas captivity, the U.S. should be using its leverage against Qatar, which is serving as an intermediary in negotiations, instead of pressuring Jerusalem to make concessions:
Qatar isn’t pressuring Hamas despite the fact that in reality, Qatar is the lifeline of Hamas—its hope, its future, its power to continue to fight and to hold the hostages. Qatar built Hamas from a small organization into a military and political power. It took pride in its training of “Hamas security officials.” . . . Without Qatar, Hamas is doomed. And why should Qatar pressure Hamas? The Biden administration is happy with it anyway.
President Biden needs a political victory for his reelection: one such victory would be to finish the war with a peace process that begins with a new hostage-release deal and allows for Biden’s plan to take off with the participation of Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Egypt, Jordan, and the Palestinian Authority.
Worse still, writes Carmon, the White House believes Qatar can help facilitate a postwar grand bargain involving Saudi-Israeli normalization and a path the Palestinian statehood:
The administration believes that Saudi Arabia, the UAE, and Egypt will join in a process in which Qatar is the leader. This will never happen. Saudi Arabia and the UAE are Qatar’s sworn adversaries. . . . Qatar is the ticking bomb that will blow up any peace process, because it stands for Hamas. In fact, it is part of . . . the anti-U.S. bloc comprising Hamas, Hizballah, the Houthis, Iran, Russia, and China (even on the issue of Taiwan, Qatar sides with China).
Read more on MEMRI: https://www.memri.org/reports/qatar-trojan-horse-washington-dc