Opinion: How Qatar is working to secure a Gaza cease-fire and deescalate regional tensions

Qatar has long promoted preventive diplomacy and mediation as the only path to resolving conflicts. For more than two decades , these critical efforts have centered on acting as an honest broker and building trust and understanding between conflicting parties.

In our role as an experienced international mediator, Qatar tries to ensure that our mediation efforts are recognized as genuine and free of hidden agendas.

It is against this backdrop that The Hill published an opinion piece that made false statements about Qatar, its mediation role between Israel and Hamas and its strong counterterror cooperation with the U.S. government.

As the war in Gaza enters its 12th month, Qatar, the U.S., Egypt and other partners continue to mediate tirelessly to end the bloodshed and secure the release of Israelis held hostage by Hamas. Our role has involved relentless shuttle-diplomacy across the region, relaying messages between the conflicting sides and working to bridge existing gaps to try to secure a cease-fire agreement. Qatar has also mediated between the powers of the region, using its contacts to try to prevent a wider regional spillover.

Over the last year, Qatar has been accused by certain nefarious actors of sponsoring Hamas and engaging in terror financing. These accusations focus on the presence of Hamas’s political leaders in Qatar but ignore the fact that this was a decision made in coordination with the U.S. over a decade ago. The objective has always been to provide a communication channel with Hamas, to resolve conflicts and manage humanitarian assistance to the 2 million Palestinians in Gaza.

Multiple U.S. administrations have relied on this channel, and during the current Gaza crisis, it has often been the only means of communication with Hamas — making it possible to secure the release of more than 100 hostages so far.

Similarly, the delivery of all Qatari aid to civilians in Gaza prior to the current war was always fully coordinated with the U.S. and Israeli governments . Qatari aid to Gaza was delivered directly to Palestinian families in need of essential supplies such as food and medicine, while additional Qatari funding provided electricity to power the homes of the Palestinian population.

The current instability in our neighborhood is especially significant because of the serious repercussions it could have beyond our region. Working together with the U.S., we believe that a negotiated peace is the only humane path forward — both to stop the violence and to prevent future global instability.

To that end, Qatar has taken some of the strictest measures to combat terror financing in the region and globally.

In 2023, the Financial Action Task Force mutually evaluated Qatar , giving it one of the highest global ratings for technical compliance with the task force’s anti-money-laundering and counterterrorism financing requirements. Meanwhile, the latest U.S. Country Report on Terrorism affirms that the United States and Qatar have “continued to increase counterterrorism cooperation, building on progress made after the U.S. Secretary of State and the Qatari Foreign Minister signed a counterterrorism [Memorandum of Understanding] in 2017.”

Building on this historic agreement, in 2019 Qatar introduced a new anti-money-laundering and counterterrorism financing framework that strengthened national legislation and expanded the definition of possible offenses. Qatar has also implemented stronger sanctions to deter potential violators and has increased coordination with its international counterparts to combat cross-border threats.

Qatar and the U.S. remain strong strategic allies and partners in the fight against terrorism financing. Last month, the CIA awarded the prestigious George Tenet Medal to Abdullah bin Mohammed Al-Khulaifi, the head of Qatar’s State Security Agency, for his efforts in strengthening intelligence cooperation between the United States and Qatar. The award comes at a time when Qatar-U.S. security cooperation has reached an all-time high , following years of close coordination through Republican- and Democrat-led administrations, across issues of shared interest including the evacuation of over 100,000 people from Afghanistan following the U.S. withdrawal in 2021, the ongoing war in Gaza and the threat of a wider regional conflict.

The war in Gaza has shattered too many families and claimed too many innocent civilian lives on all sides. In Qatar, we view our mediator role not only as a political obligation but as a moral duty to alleviate the suffering of vulnerable people and to advance global security. Our joint work with the U.S. and dozens of allies around the world has become more urgent than ever, and we vow to do whatever we can to stop the bloodshed, get hostages home and end these cycles of violence once and for all.

Ali Al-Ansari is Qatar’s media attaché in the United States, based in Washington.

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