Last weekend, numerous U.S., European, and Israeli media outlets—including CNN, The Wall Street Journal, the Financial Times, and The Times of Israel—reported that the government of Qatar was moving to expel the leadership of Hamas, the Palestinian terror group. They sourced their stories to senior Biden administration officials.
“After rejecting repeated proposals to release hostages, its leaders should no longer be welcome in the capitals of any American partner,” a senior U.S. official told the Journal on Saturday. “We made that clear to Qatar following Hamas’s rejection weeks ago of another hostage release proposal.” (This same statement was shared with other media outlets.)
The only problem with these reports is that they weren’t true. Yes, America may have asked Qatar to expel Hamas officials. But Qatar appears to have ignored the request.
Hours after the stories were published, the Qatari Foreign Ministry made clear to Western journalists that the Hamas leaders in Doha weren’t going anywhere. The Foreign Ministry stated: “[T]he main goal of the [Hamas] office in Qatar is to be a channel of communication between the concerned parties,” and called “media reports regarding the Hamas office in Doha. . . inaccurate.”
U.S. and Arab officials working on the Middle East told The Free Press this discord highlights a last-ditch Biden administration effort to secure the release of the remaining hostages in the Gaza Strip before Joe Biden leaves office. But it reveals Washington’s apparently limited appetite to pressure Qatar—a major non-NATO ally and home to the U.S.’s largest airbase in the Middle East—to help it do so. The Qataris “are trying to play all sides,” said one Arab official.
Secretary of State Antony Blinken has been shuttling between Washington, Israel, Doha, and Cairo for more than a year in a bid to secure the release of around 250 hostages—including 12 American citizens—initially seized by Hamas during its October 7, 2023, terrorist attack on southern Israel. Qatar helped broker the release of more than 100 hostages, but around 100 remain and a third of those are believed to be dead—and a ceasefire deal has eluded the mediators.
Qatar, in its statement on Saturday, said that it was pausing its hostage mediation efforts until “the parties show their willingness and seriousness to end the brutal war and the ongoing suffering of civilians.” (Qatar’s embassy in Washington did not respond to a request for comment from The Free Press.)
But the dynamics of the negotiations could be about to change dramatically, as a result of Donald Trump’s presidential victory last week. And this could lead to increased U.S. pressure on Qatar, not only to expel Hamas leaders based in Doha but to extradite some of them to the U.S. In September, the Department of Justice indicted Hamas’s current top official in Doha, Khaled Meshaal, on murder charges in relation to the October 7 attack. (The U.S. hasn’t formally filed an extradition request.)
Republicans have been publicly signaling their growing frustration with Qatar. Last week, 14 GOP senators wrote to Blinken and Attorney General Merrick Garland and demanded Qatar freeze Hamas’s financial interests in the country, extradite Meshaal and Khalil Al-Hayya—a second Hamas official living in Doha—and expel the rest of the Palestinian militant group’s members. “The defeat of Hamas is within reach, and ending the safe haven that its leadership enjoys abroad is vital to defeating it,” the letter reads.
Still, Qatar and its ruling Al Thani family aren’t without potential allies in Trump’s orbit. The president-elect’s new chief of staff, Susie Wiles, has been running a U.S. communications company, Mercury Public Affairs, which has Qatar’s embassy in Washington as a client. (Wiles herself isn’t registered as a lobbyist for the country.) Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, who has served as an informal foreign affairs adviser to Trump, is an outspoken supporter of the U.S.-Qatar alliance. And Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, has reportedly raised hundreds of millions of dollars from Qatar for his private equity fund.
In late September, Qatar’s ruler, Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani, met Trump at his Mar-a-Lago residence. “The Amir has proven to be a great and powerful leader of his country, advancing on all levels at record speed,” Trump posted on social media at the time.
Jay Solomon is an investigative reporter for The Free Press. Follow him on X at @FPJaySolomon and read his latest story, “Inside the Battle over Trump’s Foreign Policy.”
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