Qatar’s Ambassador to Gaza Mohammed al-Emadi claims that his country is helping Israel avoid another Gaza war by funneling relief money, amounting to some 800 million dollars, to impoverished Palestinians across the Gaza Strip with Washington’s blessing, describing the cooperation as evidence of Doha’s distance from the Islamist Hamas, which controls the Palestinian enclave and is international recognized as a terrorist organization. “We do not want a next war, at the moment we want to stop this. At the moment we want to cool things down and we’ve done it but for how long?” / “The work which we are doing, it is keeping peace for the both nations, for both people.” / “We feed Washington the correct information about what we are doing, and these people understand what Qatar is doing, right away, they are with us.” / “Qatar is a credible state, country. And when we tell them what is there on the ground, what we are doing there (Gaza), it is good work there. When we show that we are doing a good work, it is very simple, it is convincing,” Al Emadi said.
Since coming under an embargo last year by its US-allied Gulf Arab neighbors, Qatar has made its aid to the Gaza Strip—and the coordination with Israel needed for distribution—a focus of its diplomatic contacts with the Trump administration. Nevertheless, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain and Egypt continue their diplomatic and commercial boycott of Qatar for its alleged support of terror groups such as Hamas, as well as other allegations, including: meddling in their internal affairs and backing foreign policies of the Islamic Republic of Iran. Qatar denies all the accusations and pushes back with outreach to the United States – including several leaders of its pro-Israel Jewish community.
Meanwhile, the Qatari diplomat also announced, in an unprecedented declaration, that if Israel would reach a peace agreement with the Palestinian, Doha would immediately reach a peace accord with the Jewish state. “Israel should also recognize Palestinian rights also. It is two parts. This is a United Nations resolution, on the 1967 border acceptable. If they recognize, I think this (a Qatari-Israeli peace accord) will be done, solved and done. The things will be solved easily,” al-Emadi.
Israeli officials did not respond to a request for comment.