Unlock the Editor’s Digest for free
Roula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.
Qatar said its efforts to mediate a ceasefire and hostage deal between Israel and Hamas had “stalled” in a sign of the Gulf state’s mounting frustration with the warring parties’ failure to agree to end the war in Gaza.
The move by Doha underscores the struggle mediators, including the US and Egypt, have faced during months of tortuous talks intended to halt the more than year-long conflict. Both Israel and Hamas have refused to make the necessary compromises to reach an agreement.
The Qatari foreign ministry said on Saturday that Doha had informed Israel and Hamas 10 days ago that it would “stall its efforts” if an agreement was not reached during the most recent round of failed talks last month.
The foreign ministry statement was released a day after a US official said the Biden administration had told Qatar that Hamas’s presence in Doha was “no longer viable or acceptable”.
Those comments followed a report in the Israeli media that Qatar, which has hosted Hamas’s political office since 2012, told the Palestinian militant group that it was no longer welcome in the Gulf state.
But Majed bin Mohammed al-Ansari, Qatar’s foreign ministry spokesman, said in the statement that “reports regarding the Hamas office in Doha” were inaccurate.
Qatar, an important US ally in the region, has been one of the lead mediators looking to end the conflict and secure the release of hostages since Hamas’s October 7, 2023 attack killed about 1,200 people, according to Israel, and triggered the war in Gaza.
But it has drawn criticism from some US lawmakers and Israeli politicians for its role in hosting the militant group’s political leadership.
In addition, Doha has been angered by attacks on it by Israeli politicians, including Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, as well as the lack of progress with the talks and pressure on Qatar to do more to convince Hamas to accept a deal.
In April, the Gulf state said it was re-evaluating its role as a mediator as it complained that its efforts were being undermined by politicians with “narrow interests”. But it continued to work with the US and Egypt to secure a deal.
In September, it expressed its anger with Netanyahu’s far-right government, saying Israel’s approach was “based on an attempt to falsify facts and mislead world public opinion by repeating lies” that would “lead to the demise of peace efforts”.
But it has also been frustrated by Hamas’s intransigence, including after a US-led effort last month to broker a short-term truce and the release of some of the remaining 101 Israeli hostages held in Gaza failed to break the deadlock.
Hamas has been insisting for weeks that it would only accept a version of a multi-phased deal that would lead to a permanent ceasefire and Israel’s withdrawal from the strip in return for the release of hostages, which it endorsed at the beginning of July.
Netanyahu, meanwhile, repeatedly rejects a permanent end to the war and the withdrawal of Israeli troops from the devastated Gaza strip, where Israel’s offensive has killed more than 43,000 people, according to Palestinian health officials.
The Qatari foreign ministry statement said Doha would resume its mediation efforts “when the parties show their willingness and seriousness to end the brutal war and the ongoing suffering of civilians caused by catastrophic humanitarian conditions in the strip”.
But it added that Qatar would not “accept that mediation be a reason for blackmailing it” and “exploiting the continuation of negotiations to justify continuation of the war to serve narrow political purposes”.