Accusing Israel of carpet-bombing Gaza, Qatar PM calls for ‘time-bound’ peace process
Sheikh Mohammed Bin Abdulrahman Al Thani warns regional woes will escalate without end to war in Gaza and two-state solution, criticizes strikes on Houthis as ineffective
Israel should be locked into a process, complete with a deadline, to work toward a two-state solution with the Palestinians, Qatar’s prime minister said Tuesday, while opening the door to ties with Jerusalem should it genuinely work toward a Palestinian state.
Sheikh Mohammed Bin Abdulrahman Al Thani also revealed that talks on reaching a deal to free hostages kidnapped by the Hamas terror group from Israel were continuing to sputter, accusing Israel of carpet-bombing the Strip and arguing that only an end to the war in Gaza would bring the wider region back from the brink of “escalation everywhere.”
Speaking at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, Al Thani urged the international community to hold Israel’s feet to the fire on reaching an agreement with the Palestinians for a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
“It needs to be time-bound, it needs to be irreversible,” said Al Thani, who also serves as the emirate’s foreign minister. “We cannot leave this just at the hand of the Israelis.”
But he also dangled the possibility of normalization, saying a process with the Palestinians would open the region to ties with Israel.
“All of us, we are showing our willingness to extend our hands, to have a peace agreement with Israel, if they are willing to engage genuinely in a process that will make the Palestinians have their state at the end,” he said.
Al-Thani added that without a viable, sustainable two-state solution, the international community will be unwilling to finance the reconstruction of Gaza. Doha was a prime figure in the reconstruction of Gaza following the 2014 war and continued to prop up the Strip’s faltering economy with regular infusions of hundreds of millions of dollars.
“We need to address how to end the war as soon as possible, how to get the hostages released and also the Palestinian prisoners [jailed in Israel], to address the issue in the West Bank,” he said.
But Al Thani, whose Gulf state has played a key role in indirect talks between Israel and Hamas aimed at freeing the approximately 250 people kidnapped from southern Israel on October 7, said negotiations around a ceasefire-for-hostages deal were “going through a lot of difficulty.”
He took aim at Israel’s offensive in the Gaza Strip, whose goal is to eradicate Hamas following the October 7 massacres, during which terrorists stormed into Israel and killed some 1,200 people, mostly civilians.
“Gaza is not there anymore. I mean, there is nothing over there,” he said. “It’s carpet-bombing everywhere.”
The Qatari premier also criticized US and British military strikes on Houthi rebel sites in Yemen aimed at halting a string of attacks in the Red Sea that have disrupted global trade, warning that the conflict would continue to metastasize unless fighting in Gaza halted.
“We need to address the central issue, which is Gaza, in order to get everything else defused… if we are just focusing on the symptoms and not treating the real issues, [solutions] will be temporary,” he said.
“What we have right now in the region is a recipe of escalation everywhere,” al-Thani added.
He accused Israel’s “extremist government” of blocking a path toward a two-state solution.
“We cannot have a two-state solution without having a government and politicians in Israel who believe in coexisting together side by side peacefully and we cannot have all this ongoing without ending this war,” he said.
But he also said Hamas, which rejects Israel’s existence, could not be removed from the Palestinian political system, as Israel aims to do.
“The Palestinians are the only ones who have a choice to have them as part of a resolution or not,” he said.
