Has Qatar ever been punished for supporting Hamas?

Question

Qatar is Hamas' most important financial backer and foreign ally. Qatari Emir Sheik Hamad bin Khalifa al-Thani was the first state leader to visit the Hamas government in 2012. So far, the emirate has transferred €1.5 billion ($1.8 billion) to Hamas. Israel, meanwhile, hopes Qatar will join the US-brokered Abraham Accords and establish diplomatic relations with it, as a number of Arab states already have done.

https://amp.dw.com/en/who-is-hamas/a-57537872

Has Qatar ever been punished for supporting Hamas? The article above says that Qatar not only has been an ally, but it also financed the terrorist group. Has Qatar ever been punished through sanctions or some other means for supporting the terrorist organization? If not, why?

Answer 1

Funds transferred from Qatar to Hamas in the Gaza strip have at various times been with not just the knowledge, or the consent, but with the active help of the Israeli government (source here, though this is very well-documented and you can find plenty of others). Given this, it would be hard to accuse Qatar of supporting Hamas without also levelling the same accusation at (among others) Netanyahu, the Prime Minister of Israel.

That's not to say that nobody makes those claims. What funds Gaza receives, via what method, and from which sources has been a long-running argument within Israeli politics. But Qatar supplying funding isn't the same thing as them docking ships full of weapons for Hamas. Israel maintained very strict controls over what materials could actually be imported into Gaza (and exported out of it as well).

I hope this is useful context for why Qatar's involvement in the funding of the Gaza strip, and the Hamas-run government, isn't treated in the same way as Iranian arms and training being given to the Hamas military wing.

Answer 2

At the end of the day, Gaza needs funding, to keep its 2M people going. Given that its government is Hamas, one can go quite far stating that "one doesn't support Hamas, the terrorist group, one is merely assisting a population in need, whose government is Hamas, the "resistance" * group".

Sophistry and fund diversion considerations aside, what does everyone else propose, that those folk are left to starve? Even the EU funds Gaza. Think Hamas doesn't skim?

Now, this isn't necessarily stating that Qatar is a paragon of virtue and that helping Hamas hasn't been a problem in the past *. Merely that this notion of "punishment" is a bit unrealistic, all the more against an oil producing country. Plenty of countries fund armed groups. And plenty of countries in the region have even more skeletons in their closet. Rich Saudi Arabians, though not the government, funded Al Qaeda in the past, after Bin Laden got exiled. Saudi Arabia only got the anti-terrorist religion when they were faced with the risk of internal uprisings and terrorism themselves, in the early/mid 2000s, way past 9/11.

p.s. Just to be clear: I don't doubt Hamas diverts resources. As a, nasty, dictatorship, that's pretty much part of their job description. A fuel tank they own exploding however doesn't mean that the world should shrug and say, well, "Gaza hospitals could run with THAT fuel, so those hospitals can stay dry until Hamas gives up their hoard". That is just not going to happen while Hamas remains in power, so a blockade until then is not ethically permissible. As part of humanitarian re-supply pauses, maybe the UN could deliver fuel to specifically those hospitals and not just Gaza as a whole. Certainly more conditions should be imposed. But not just a blanket blockade.

* Post 10/7 and the particularly horrific methods to slaughter a 1000+ civilians at close range (no collateral damage here, no), I suspect Hamas sponsorship will become more toxic to deal with.

Answer 3

Kinda was by Saudi Arabia et co. when they broke off relations (restored in the meantime). Although the accusation was more vaguely phrased that Qatar supports terrorism. But that was also due to Qatar's closeness to Iran, which goes hand in hand with their support for Gaza, given Iran's support for Hamas. So that event was related in a complicated way, even if the Saudis don't dislike Hamas directly that much.

There's also one point of distinction that Qatar would probably like to make, i.e. that (in their view) they sponsor "above board" civilian projects in Gaza, even if this includes paying civil servants directly there. In contrast, I understand that Iran directly claims/admits to be sponsoring Hamas' military wing.