Qatari PM says he won’t write a check to rebuild what Israel destroyed in Gaza

DOHA — Qatari Prime Minister Mohammed Abdulrahman Al Thani said Sunday that his country will not foot the bill for rebuilding Gaza, despite speculation that it would be the main backer of reconstruction.

“We are not the ones who are going to write the check to rebuild what others destroyed,” Al Thani said during an onstage interview at the Doha Forum, an annual diplomatic conference. “When you are talking about Gaza,” he went on, “Israel flattened this land.”

He indicated that Qatar will limit its funding to humanitarian aid, declaring that it will continue supporting the Palestinian people and do what it can to alleviate their suffering.

“Our payments will only go to help the Palestinian people if we see that the help coming to them is insufficient,” Al Thani said, without elaborating.

A Qatari government spokesperson later clarified that Doha is only opposed to funding Gaza’s reconstruction on its own. He indicated that Qatar is prepared to fund such projects if it is doing so with other countries from around the world.

He also listed a succession of Israeli prime ministers and security agencies that, he said, endorsed Qatar’s sending funds into Gaza in the years before the Hamas invasion on October 7, 2023: “[Prime Ministers] Netanyahu, Bennett, we have dealt with all the agencies, Lapid was the prime minister at a certain point of time, Mossad, Shin Bet, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs… and the Defense [Ministry], all of them were involved.”

If Qatar decides not to back reconstruction projects in Gaza, it is even more unclear who would be willing to do so, as Doha had been seen to place fewer conditions on its support than other wealthy Gulf countries such as the UAE and Saudi Arabia, which have insisted they won’t offer funds absent a clear pathway to the establishment of a Palestinian state, which Israel rejects.

The UN suggested last month that it would cost approximately $70 billion to rebuild Gaza, where entire neighborhoods have been flattened, estimating that around 75 percent of buildings in the Strip have been damaged or destroyed.

In April, the EU pledged $1.6 billion euros ($1.87 billion) toward rebuilding Gaza, and last week Chinese President Xi Jinping promised $100 million in aid, but it still remains unclear who will foot most of the bill.

At the end of Al Thani’s onstage interview with Tucker Carlson, the American conservative commentator and conspiracy theorist announced that he will be purchasing a home in Qatar.

“I have been criticized as being a tool of Qatar… I’ve never taken anything from your country and don’t plan to. I am, however, tomorrow, buying a place in Qatar,” Carlson said on stage.

“I’m doing that because I like the city, I think it’s beautiful, but also to make the statement that I’m an American and a free man and I’ll be wherever I want to be,” the former Fox News presenter said.

Qatar is classified by Washington as a major non-NATO ally, and has assiduously courted US President Donald Trump, gifting him a luxury plane in May to serve as a new Air Force One amid delays in the delivery of new presidential aircraft.

Al Thani said Sunday that unnamed people were putting in “a lot of effort to sabotage the relationship between Qatar and the United States and to try to demonize anyone who will come to this country.”

He acknowledged outreach by the Gulf country to the United States “to make sure that this relationship is safeguarded and the relationship for us is mutually beneficial.”

“We pay all these amounts for lobbying only to protect and to safeguard this relationship,” he added.

Qatar was a key mediator of the ongoing US-backed truce in Gaza, and has come under fire in the past from US and Israeli political figures for hosting the political bureau of the Hamas terror group, which it has done with Washington’s blessing since 2012.

Doha has nonetheless fiercely denied support for the group.

In September, Israel carried out a strike in Doha, targeting Hamas negotiators in an unprecedented regional escalation during the Gaza war.

Trump pushed Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to apologize to Doha in a phone call with Al Thani in which he “expressed his deep regret that Israel’s missile strike against Hamas targets in Qatar unintentionally killed a Qatari serviceman,” as well as the fact that “in targeting Hamas leadership during hostage negotiations, Israel violated Qatari sovereignty.”

Times of Israel staff contributed to this report.