Qatar is not really acting as a go-between, but more as Hamas' advocate. As Seth Mandel writes in Commentary:.
Qatar is involved in the negotiations because it is Hamas’s bank and crisis PR firm on retainer. It hosts Hamas leaders and gives the terrorists hundreds of millions of dollars a year. It is the “largest foreign donor to American universities,” which you may have noticed are pushing a distinctly rancid mix of Soviet and Hamas propaganda and passing it off as an academic discipline of “decolonization” studies, all while these campuses erupt with sometimes-violent rallies in support of Hamas. Qatar is also the disseminator of a hugely popular television station devoted entirely to the wishes of dictators and thugs.
In other words, Qatar is not adding value to the negotiations. It is only burnishing its own image as a party trusted by all. But it keeps that image by supporting terrorism.
Qatar would be far more useful if the West would pressure it, not coddle it. Because Hamas needs Qatar, not the other way around.
At the same time, another most interesting story came out:
According to an unnamed Egyptian source quoted in London-based pan-Arab news site Al-Araby Al-Jadeed, Thursday, Hamas is also set to release 23 Thai hostages following Iranian mediation between the Palestinian terror group and Bangkok.
If true, Hamas is willing to let go of 23 hostages - just because Iran asked them to.
Without demanding anything in return.
In other words, both Qatar and Iran could pressure Hamas to release all the hostages if they thought it was in their own best interests. And serious economic pressure from the West could ensure that it would be in their own best interests.
Instead, the US and others are coddling two of the parties that have direct influence on Hamas. (Turkey probably does as well.)
But instead of realizing that this mass kidnapping affects the entire free world, the West is instead forcing Israel to release terrorists and go through an agonizing, indefinite period of time where maybe some hostages will be released in dribs and drabs, over months or years (if Hamas is given a lifeline by these same Western governments.)
Hamas has patrons. We all know who they are. Yet the Western world has said that this is Israel's problem and it must play a game where it gives in to some Hamas demands.
Something really stinks here.
