“The most accommodating mediator is Qatar,” said director of Geneva-based CERMAM. (File)
Paris:
The Emirate of Qatar, which has good relations with both Western governments and Hamas, has emerged as the key power in efforts to free hostages seized by the Palestinian Hamas group from Israel, with other states ready to assist.
French President Emmanuel Macron on Friday praised the key role played by Qatar in the release by Hamas of two American hostages held since the October 7 attack on Israel, adding that he was confident of further releases.
In such situations, the West is increasingly using the influence of the small but gas-rich Arab Gulf state, a major global investor, with Qatar’s role also crucial in the release last month of five Americans held by Iran.
Although Egypt has traditionally served as the main mediator between Israel and Palestinian groups in recent years, and Turkey under President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has also made no secret of its desire to be involved, the focus is on Qatar helping to return the hostages safely .
“The most accommodating mediator is Qatar,” said Hasni Abidi, director of the Geneva-based Center for Studies and Research on the Arab and Mediterranean World (CERMAM).
“It knows Hamas well and is its loyal financier,” he said, referring to Doha’s financing of civil servants’ salaries in the Hamas-run Gaza Strip.
Qatar, which has hosted Hamas’s political office for more than a decade, is also respected by the United States, Israel’s main ally. It is home to the largest US military base in the region.
– ‘Right channels’ –
Israel says 203 people – Israelis, dual nationals and foreigners – were kidnapped by Hamas gunmen as they launched the deadliest attacks in Israel’s 75-year history. At least 1,400 people, mostly civilians, were killed, according to the government.
Israel has responded with a brutal bombing campaign against the Gaza Strip, killing at least 4,385 people, mostly civilians, according to the Hamas government.
American hostages Judith Tai Raanan and her daughter Natalie Shoshana Raanan were back in Israel late Friday, the Israeli government said.
“This is a very good result of the negotiators, in which Qatar played a very important role,” Macron told a group of reporters on Friday.
Macron said France wanted similar operations to continue in the coming “hours and days” to “allow hostages, especially our hostages, to escape.”
“We are confident: the channels we have are the right ones and are useful,” he added. In a later post on X, formerly Twitter, Macron said Qatar played a “decisive role” in securing the release of the two American hostages.
Qatar is a “specialist in the release of hostages,” said Etienne Dignat of Sciences Po University in Paris and an expert on hostage situations.
It was with Qatar that $6 billion in frozen Iranian funds from South Korean banks were parked awaiting release in a hugely complex and sensitive swap deal of the five US citizens held by Iran.
– ‘No collective bargaining’ –
According to diplomatic sources, it appears to have been no coincidence that Macron’s envoy to Lebanon, former Foreign Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian, a trusted confidant of the president on security issues, was in Qatar this week.
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken also visited Qatar this week during his marathon trip to the region.
“Qatar plays a double game: it maintains relations with terrorist groups as well as with certain Western countries that are indebted to it,” Dignat said.
The emirate had invited the Taliban to open an office in Doha with the approval of the United States, making it possible to negotiate the withdrawal of US troops from Afghanistan in 2021, although this was subsequently followed by the Taliban’s return to the power.
Other heavyweights in the region are trying to intervene at the same time.
Turkey has received “requests from several countries” for help, Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan, his country’s former spy chief, said in Beirut on Tuesday.
Erdogan has sought in recent months to strengthen ties with Israel, which has suffered in recent years following a series of bitter disputes. But this threatens to result in Ankara not being trusted by either side.
And it was Egypt that helped secure the release in 2011 of Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit, who had been held by Hamas for more than five years.
Potential actors are “only those who have built long-term relationships with Hamas and therefore the only ones authorized to make contact with its leaders,” Abidi said.
But in this case, the unprecedented number of hostages and the number of nationalities represented among them means that there will be no single solution and diplomacy will likely be tight.
“There will be no collective bargaining,” Abidi said. Each state will be called upon to negotiate the release of its own hostages.”
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)
