In a shock move, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates on Wednesday recalled their envoys to Qatar.Qatar is not only a major benefactor for the Muslim Brotherhood, but it supports Hamas as well.
The three countries said the move was taken to "to protect their security and stability," a Saudi Press Agency statement said.
The trio also said that Qatar had not “committed to the principles” of the six-member Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC), and said "Qatar has to take the appropriate steps to ensure the security of the GCC states."
They made the decision following what Gulf media described as a "stormy" late Tuesday meeting of foreign ministers from the six-nation Gulf Cooperation Council in Riyadh, according to Agence France-Presse.
GCC countries "have exerted massive efforts to contact Qatar on all levels to agree on a unified policy... to ensure non-interference, directly or indirectly, in the internal affairs of any member state," the statement said.
The nations have also asked Qatar, a backer of the Muslim Brotherhood movement that is banned in most Gulf states, "not to support any party aiming to threaten security and stability of any GCC member," it added, citing media campaigns against them in particular.
The statement stressed that despite the commitment of Qatar's emir Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad al-Thani to these principles during a mini-summit held in Riyadh in November with Kuwait's emir and the Saudi monarch, his country has failed to comply.
Another victim of Arab antipathy towards Qatar has been Al Jazeera. Egypt arrested three Al Jazeera employees last December, accusing them of "spreading false news and belonging to a terrorist group."
Egypt and the Gulf countries are treating Muslim Brotherhood style Islamism as an existential threat. This is the biggest story in the Middle East since the "Arab Spring," in fact it is a direct result of that.
When the semblance of unity is patched up again, this will all be blamed on Israel. After all, we learned only a few days ago that a UN report says that internal Arab divisions are primarily because of foreign interference, and the worst perpetrator of that interference is Israel, which has been thwarting Arab unity since before 1948. The only thing Arabs can unify around is, after all, how Israel is to blame for all their problems - including having no unity.