Around the fighting between Israel and Hamas militants in Gaza, regional allegiances are complex, confusing, and unconventional.
Especially intriguing are interventions by Qatar.
The little emirate blessed with the world’s largest gas field is alienating its Persian Gulf neighbors.
In a loose alliance with Turkey, Qatar is trying to work as a conciliator in the Gazan conflict.
The effort irks Egypt, which feels usurped in the peacemaking role and betrayed by Qatar’s earlier financial support of former President Mohammed Morsi.
And the embrace of Hamas alarms Saudi Arabia, already piqued at its small neighbor for supporting the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt and affiliates elsewhere. The United Arab Emirates joins Saudi Arabia in the view that Hamas and the Muslim Brotherhood, ties with which led to Morsi’s ouster in Egypt, threaten stability.
Pressures don’t confine themselves to the Israeli-Gazan boarder, of course.
There’s always Iran, which provided Hamas money and weapons in Gaza until the group backed rebels fighting the regime of Bashar al-Assad in Syria. Iran supports Assad, to the outspoken distress of Saudi Arabia, with which it remains locked in a contest for regional influence.
As fighting escalated last month in Israel and Gaza, the Islamic Republic was not coming to agreement over its nuclear program with representatives of the five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council and Germany. The negotiators extended the agreement deadline by 4 months.
Israel and Saudi Arabia watch those developments with existential concern. Neither country relishes the prospect of an Iran able to deliver nuclear weapons.
With Iran, Qatar is reported to have tried to stabilize relations. While the move hardly allays Saudi suspicion toward Qatari diplomatic ventures, it has a practical dimension. Qatar’s supergiant North gas field extends into Iranian waters, where it’s called South Pars.
What these shifting alliances mean and what Qatar hopes to achieve are important questions for the future of the Middle East.
Far more important, though, is when the killing will end in Gaza and Israel.
(From the subscription area of www.ogj.com, posted Aug. 1, 2014; author’s e-mail: [email protected])