On Sept. 9, Israel’s air force bombed a residential neighborhood in Doha, Qatar, to take out Hamas’s senior political leadership. According to Hamas, five members were killed, but not its primary leaders. Doha, a key U.S. ally, strongly condemned the attack. Even U.S. President Donald Trump lamented the strike on Truth Social: “I view Qatar as a strong ally and friend of the U.S., and feel very badly about the location of the attack.”
Will Doha continue to play a role mediating between Hamas and Israel? And does Qatar still believe its interests lie in its broader role in peace negotiations around the world? I spoke with Majed al-Ansari at the Concordia summit on Monday, Sept. 22, on the sidelines of the 80th annual United Nations General Assembly. Ansari is an advisor to the prime minister of Qatar and the spokesperson of its ministry of foreign affairs.
What follows here is a condensed and edited transcript.
Ravi Agrawal: Let’s start with Israel’s attack targeting Hamas leadership in Doha on Sept. 9. There are reports that your prime minister has demanded an apology from Israel. Is that correct?
Majed al-Ansari: The issue here is not who is going to issue an apology. The issue is that there was a grave attack on sovereignty. An attack on the concept of mediation. An attack on peace, that took place at a time when my country was mediating in 12 different areas, including between Hamas and Israel.
The attack happened in a residential area that houses 5,000 people and a number of schools. Kids—including American kids—had to shelter in place. At the time of the attack the neighborhood had 13 different embassies operating from the same neighborhood. This was not an isolated incident. It’s not an assassination of a dissident. It’s not an attack within a conflict zone.
It was an attack on the concept of mediation between adversaries; the concept of solving conflict through peaceful means; the concept of international diplomacy.
RA: What does this do to Qatar’s relations with Israel now? Are they recoverable?
MA: This is a paradigm shift for the whole region. After the Oslo Accords, Qatar was one of the first countries to start engaging Israel in the region. We saw at that point a chance for peace. We saw a chance for our children and our children’s children to live in a neighborhood that is not synonymous with conflict. We saw a chance for the Palestinian people to realize, finally, a state—and for the Arab-Israeli conflict to be resolved with diplomatic means. Sadly, that did not happen and the situation got worse every day. Israel was never seen as a direct threat to any Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) country.
RA: You just used the past tense there. You’re saying Israel is, now, a threat?
MA: Of course. I mean, if one of your countrymen is killed by an airstrike by any country, and if that country does it unilaterally even behind the backs of their own intelligence agencies, to attack a residential neighborhood, are we not entitled to view that country as a national security threat?
If you read the GCC statement that came out of the meeting that happened on the sidelines of the Arab-Islamic summit, with the participation of 57 countries in Doha, it says very clearly this attack puts every agreement in the region at risk.
RA: Qatar is a close ally of the United States. There are reports that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu informed U.S. President Donald Trump about the attack ahead of time. Do you believe those reports, and if so, what does that mean for the Doha-Washington relationship?
MA: The first call his highness got after the attack was by Trump, who informed him personally that the United States was not consulted, and was not informed, and he said the United States would make sure, through his leadership, that an attack like this never happens again.
This is the unilateral action of Netanyahu. We are working very closely with the United States to make sure that that doesn’t happen again.
Here in New York, there will be direct meetings with President Trump to talk about the dangers of an unhinged leadership taking such a unilateral decision in our region, throwing stability and the prosperity of the Middle East—and especially the Gulf Cooperation Council states—into chaos.
RA: You sound very angry about Israel. You just said they have an “unhinged leadership.” Do you think the United States has leverage, and ability to use that leverage, to change Israel’s actions in the region?
MA: Well, the same week that Qatar was bombed, seven countries in the region were bombed by Israeli airstrikes. The level of regional spillover of this war has reached a tipping point.
We are now at a point where Prime Minister Netanyahu decides to bomb Damascus, decides to bomb south Lebanon, decides to send his troops into south Syria, bomb Yemen, and now bomb Qatar, with complete impunity.
But if that means you have absolutely no respect for international law or the sovereignty of other countries, then the international community has to intervene. And this is why we immediately went to the [U.N.] Security Council and to the Human Rights Council in Geneva and are working very closely with the Organization of Islamic [Cooperation] and with the Arab League—
[interrupts]
RA: I have to ask: Does any of that matter? Here we are, sitting in New York at the 80th anniversary of the United Nations, and everyone’s asking: Do rules matter?
MA: This is the greatest danger in today’s world, Ravi, and you put your finger on the most important thing right here. Is the international rules-based order dying under the pressure of leaders who decide they don’t care about the rules? They don’t care about peace; they don’t care about the world order that was founded to stop us from running toward a third world war.
It is our goal right now to push for the safeguarding of the international system. If you ask the people of the world in general, there’s a lot of frustration with the incapacity of the international community to do anything about the myriad of conflicts that just keep piling. But what is the alternative? Is it a power-based international system that gives any regional hegemon the right to do whatever it wants in its region? Well, if that happens, then we are all at risk.
RA: Let me ask you a broader question. It strikes me that not everyone knows the role that Qatar has been playing for the last several decades. You have mediated several conflicts around the world. My understanding is that Doha has done so, in part because it’s a noble calling, but also because it wants to be indispensable to countries around the world as part of a means to safeguard its interests. Now, that vision was born in an era when rules really mattered, when there was less of a sense of impunity for breaking rules. If we agree that we’re in an era that resembles a bit like the law of the jungle where might is right, then does the Qatari model no longer work?
MA: You know, Ravi, at the time when we were attacked on [Sept. 9], we were conducting 12 different mediations. This is what Qatar is, this is what we believe in, and it will take much more than a bully to drive this away from people.
RA: But again, I will remind you, in the last few months, you have had Iran send missiles at you for an American military base, Al Udeid, that America asked you to install. You have had a lot of public recrimination over the fact that you had originally, you know, brokered talks with the Taliban and the United States, now between Hamas and Israel and the U.S., and you’re paying the costs for it. You are being attacked.
MA: Peace is not cheap. The commitment to peace is not a luxury. The fact that we have been attacked only proves the importance of the role of mediator and peace facilitator in the world today. The fact is that there are those around the world that find these tasks threatening to their agendas. It is the main reason why we need more peace facilitators around the world today.
You know, one of the main reasons we’re singled out like this is a lot of states around the world have the capacity to be peace facilitators. But they don’t. They don’t because of political considerations internally. They don’t because they are risk-averse. But unless we have other countries stand in solidarity with the mediators, this will always be an issue because it’s easy to single out one mediator when it doesn’t fit your agenda and when you don’t want a peace deal to happen.
We’re not doing it alone. We’re working with our European counterparts; we’re signing agreements with countries over these issues in Asia, in Africa, in Latin America. We are working with partners to see how we can build these consortiums of countries that are willing to work for peace. The risk is always there. We pride ourselves on taking that risk.
You can’t take for granted the fact that my generation and my children are living in peace and prosperity and hope that the rest of the world will keep that peace and prosperity for our children. We have to do whatever we can do, and yes, at times we have to take the risk.
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