At the World Economic Forum in Switzerland last week, the Qatari prime minister expressed his hope that the Palestinian Authority (PA) can resume governance over the Gaza Strip once the current cease-fire is made permanent. Khaled Abu Toameh explains that Qatar doesn’t support this outcome “out of affection for the PA,” but for very different reasons:

Qatar wants the PA government to collect the garbage, rebuild destroyed houses, and pay salaries to Palestinians in the Gaza Strip, while Hamas is busy rearming, regrouping, and getting ready for the next attack on Israel.

Qatar’s financial and political backing of Hamas has caused tensions between the PA and Qatar over the past two decades. PA officials have frequently criticized Qatar for backing their rivals in Hamas. Earlier this month, the PA-Qatar crisis reached its peak when the PA government in Ramallah, the de-facto capital of the Palestinians in the West Bank, decided to suspend the broadcasts of the Qatar-owned Al Jazeera television [station] for supporting and promoting Hamas and other Palestinian terror groups.

If the Palestinian Authority is allowed to operate in the Gaza Strip while Hamas is still in power, another slaughter of Israelis, most likely worse than the October 7 carnage, will occur. The Qataris do not want the PA in the Gaza Strip to rein in Hamas and other terrorist groups, or to prevent attacks against Israel. Instead, they want the PA to act as a front to maintain Hamas’s hold on power. . . . Whether the new U.S. administration will be as gullible as other Westerners in trusting Qatar remains to be seen.

Yesterday, Israel’s Channel 12 reported that Israeli representatives have been involved in secret talks, brokered by the United Arab Emirates, with their Syrian counterparts about the potential establishment of diplomatic relations between their countries. Even more surprisingly, on Wednesday an Israeli reporter spoke with a senior official from Syria’s information ministry, Ali al-Rifai. The prospect of a member of the Syrian government, or even a private citizen, giving an on-the-record interview to an Israeli journalist was simply unthinkable under the old regime. What’s more, his message was that Damascus seeks peace with other countries in the region, Israel included.

These developments alone should make Israelis sanguine about Donald Trump’s overtures to Syria’s new rulers. Yet the interim president Ahmed al-Sharaa’s jihadist resumé, his connections with Turkey and Qatar, and brutal attacks on minorities by forces aligned with, or part of, his regime remain reasons for skepticism. While recognizing these concerns, Noah Rothman nonetheless makes the case for optimism:

The old Syrian regime was an incubator and exporter of terrorism, as well as an Iranian vassal state. The Assad regime trained, funded, and introduced terrorists into Iraq intent on killing American soldiers. It hosted Iranian terrorist proxies as well as the Russian military and its mercenary cutouts. It was contemptuous of U.S.-backed proscriptions on the use of chemical weapons on the battlefield, necessitating American military intervention—an unavoidable outcome, clearly, given Barack Obama’s desperate efforts to avoid it. It incubated Islamic State as a counterweight against the Western-oriented rebel groups vying to tear that regime down, going so far as to purchase its own oil from the nascent Islamist group.

The Assad regime was an enemy of the United States. The Sharaa regime could yet be a friend to America. . . . Insofar as geopolitics is a zero-sum game, taking Syria off the board for Russia and Iran and adding it to the collection of Western assets would be a triumph. At the very least, it’s worth a shot. Trump deserves credit for taking it.