As Doha signals a major breakthrough in negotiations over the release of Israeli abductees in Gaza, a delicate diplomatic dance involving Washington, Jerusalem, and a wily Hamas supporter, Qatar, is becoming ever more awkward.  

The wealthy gas-producing Gulf country has long played a dual game, financing Hamas in Gaza and hosting the terrorist group’s top leaders, while claiming a peacemaker role. Qatar’s arsonist-and-fireman play is now culminating as it becomes key negotiator over the release of more than 220 Israeli hostages Hamas holds in Gaza.    

“There is some progress and some breakthrough and we remain hopeful,” the Qatari prime minister, Sheikh Mohammed Bin Abdulrahman al-Thani, told Doha reporters Wednesday. American and Israeli officials are praising the wealthy country’s efforts to release those Hamas kidnapped on October 7. 

Earlier this week, Israeli officials thanked America and Egypt for helping to secure the release of two elderly women from Gaza. While Washington praised Qatar’s diplomatic role, Jerusalem pointedly refused to do so. Two days later, though, Israel changed its tune. 

“I’m pleased to say that Qatar is becoming an essential party and stakeholder in the facilitation of humanitarian solutions,” Israel’s national security adviser, Tsachi Hanegbi, wrote on X Wednesday. “Qatar’s diplomatic efforts are crucial at this time.”

The statement by one of Prime Minister Netanyahu’s closest advisers is largely seen as a signal that hostage negotiations are indeed progressing. To further placate Qatar, Israel postponed a plan to shut down the offices of its mouthpiece, Al Jazeera, in the country. 

Critics are livid. “Qatar is not a ‘stakeholder’,” a former premier, Naftali Bennett, writes on X. “Qatar is an enemy. Israel’s declared goal is to destroy Hamas, Qatar’s goal is the opposite, to save Hamas.”  

Addressing the UN Security Council Tuesday, Israel’s foreign minister, Eli Cohen, raised Doha’s ire when he said that “Qatar, which finances and harbors Hamas leaders, could influence and enable the immediate and unconditional release of the hostages held by the terrorists.” 

The Qataris started transferring funds to Gaza in the last decade. “Do you think we could do that without Israel’s consent?” a senior Doha official told the Sun at the time. He insisted that Qatar is supervising its financial aid to guarantee it is used solely for humanitarian needs in Gaza, rather than to arm Hamas.

For years, some $30 million in monthly cash transfers from Qatar mostly covered Hamas officials’ salaries. Each time it ran out of cash, Hamas would fire at Israel. The Qatari envoy to Gaza, Mohammed al-Emadi, would then drive to the Strip with suitcases filled with hundred dollar bills. The bribes bought Israel calm — until the next rocket rounds.

That delicate dance ended with the horrific October 7 attack, which destroyed the Israeli illusion that Hamas’s genocidal goals, as explicitly expressed in its founding charter, could be moderated by Qatari development funds.  

Hamas’s top leader, Ismail Haniyeh, his predecessor, Khaled Meshal, and other officials have long lived in luxury at Doha. Far from the poverty and squalor of Gaza, they used their Qatari sanctuary to plan the October massacre.

Addressing reporters on October 13, Sheikh Mohammed declined to say whether Qatar would now exile those leaders. The premier spoke at a Doha press conference alongside Secretary Blinken, who also refrained from publicly demanding that Qatar expel the Hamas terrorist leaders. 

Earlier this week Mr. Blinken called Sheikh Mohammed to thank him for helping in the release of four hostages, and to discuss “efforts to secure the immediate and safe return of all hostages and reaffirmed the strategic partnership between the United States and Qatar,” according to a state department statement. That partnership includes America’s largest Mideast airbase, at Qatar’s Al Ubeid. 

On Wednesday, Mr. Blinken reportedly asked the Qataris to tone down Al Jazeera’s pro-Islamist, virulently anti-Israel rhetoric. Doha often dismisses such calls by citing “freedom of speech.” By only issuing such mild criticism of Qatar, Washington seems to be encouraging its diplomacy with regard to Hamas’s hostages. 

Yet, by releasing a small number of hostages at a time, Hamas is attempting to put a humanitarian gloss on its atrocities. More strategically, Qatar’s diplomacy is helping Hamas delay Israel’s long-promised Gaza invasion.

“The war will be long, and will include operations away from Israel’s borders,” the IDF chief of staff, Lieutenant General Herzi Halevi, said this week in what was widely seen as a vow to assassinate Qatari-based Hamas bigwigs. 

“Qatar manipulates us with faux-humanitarian gestures,” Mr. Bennett writes. “It will float the release of a limited number of hostages every few days” to “block our efforts to destroy Hamas,” adding that Qatar is the enemy and “if you can’t identify your enemy, you cannot fight it.”     

Praising Doha is a “major mistake,” he writes. Yet, in 2021-22, when Mr. Bennett was prime minister, Israel purchased deceptive Gaza calm with Qatari cash deliveries just as during Mr. Netnayhu’s tenure. “I, of course, am also responsible” for Israel’s blindness to the menace from Gaza, Mr. Bennett acknowledged last week.