ME FORUM
The time has come to stop doing business with Qatar unless it turns over Hamas officials residing in its country and stops pouring money into Hamas’s coffers.
Hamas’s main office is in Doha, where its leader, Ismail Haniyeh, leads a life of luxury. He watched Hamas’s Einsatzgruppen-like October 7 assault in his office there while prostrating “in gratitude.” Two weeks ago, Haniyeh met with Iranian foreign minister Hossein Amirabdollahian in Doha.
It was from Doha that Haniyeh’s predecessor as Hamas chief, Khaled Meshaal, called for the governments and people of Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, and Egypt to join the war against Israel.
Meshaal also resides in Qatar.
Qatar has provided $30 million a month in aid to Gaza since 2018. Didier Billion, deputy director of the French Institute for International and Strategic Advisors, has said, “These payments are justified to pay civil servants in Gaza, and we know perfectly well that the latter are members of Hamas. Doha’s money is therefore the equivalent of direct support for this organization which has held the Palestinian enclave with an iron fist for many years.”
Qatar also pledged $500 million to aid in reconstructing Gaza in 2021. Its total aid to Gaza as of 2023 is more than $2.1 billion.
Qatar also owns Al Jazeera, the highly influential Arabic-language news service that has been accused of supporting terrorism and spreading antisemitism.
After Hamas’s recent massacre, Qatar issued a statement that Israel was “alone responsible” due to “repeated raids on the blessed Al-Aqsa Mosque.”
Given such evidence, it is undeniable that Qatar is openly on the side of Hamas in this war.
American financial firms, however, have formed deep relationships with Qatar over the years, particularly its sovereign wealth fund, the Qatar Investment Authority (QIA).
For example, Bill Ackman’s Pershing Square Capital Management. QIA invested $141 million in its 2014 IPO. A 2017 submission to the UK Financial Conduct authority indicated that QIA owned 4.56 percent of Pershing Square Holdings Ltd.’s Net Asset Value.
As of April 14, 2023, QIA beneficially owned 7.4 percent of Apollo Commercial Real Estate Finance Inc., a fund of Marc Rowan’s Apollo Global Management. This made QIA the third-largest shareholder, after only BlackRock and Vanguard. On August 29, 2023, it was reported that QIA had bought New York City’s Park Lane Hotel for $623 million, of which Apollo Global Management provided $400 million of financing.
In June 2023 it was reported that QIA would buy approximately 5 percent of a firm owned by private equity firm KKR. David Petraeus, a partner at KKR and chairman of the KKR Global Institute, spoke at the Qatar Global Forum in May of this year.
