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Israeli President Shimon Peres on Wednesday told United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-moon that Israel would not stand by while Qatar, which paid for the UN official’s private flight to the Middle East, continued to finance Hamas militants, and took Ban to task for the two UN-run schools found to be housing Hamas rockets in Gaza. In his last full day in office, Peres, a historically dovish leader, struck a defiant tone in a statement delivered to the media after meeting Ban at the President’s Residence, in Jerusalem. “Qatar does not have the right to send money for rockets and...

Gulf emirate is branded the villain behind Hamas belligerence, with PM’s former security adviser saying it funds tunnel diggers and rocket launchers. President Shimon Peres accused Qatar on Wednesday of becoming “the world’s largest funder of terror” due to its financial support for Hamas in Gaza. “Qatar does not have the right to send money for rockets and tunnels which are fired at innocent civilians,” the outgoing statesman told UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon in Jerusalem. “Their funding of terror must stop. If they want to build then they should, but they must not be allowed to destroy.” Qatar’s recently...

Hamas continues to be uncompromising in its position regarding an international cease-fire, AFP reports Wednesday. "We reject today and will reject in the future," Hamas leader-in-exile Khaled Meshaal insisted, in a public speech in Qatar. Meshaal insisted that Israel must accept his list of unprecedented conditions for a cease-fire - which included lifting several security measures, such as the naval blockade and border control, designed to prevent terrorists entering into Israel, as well as re-releasing terrorists arrested earlier this month - and only then will Hamas deliberate with Israel on a date for a cease-fire. Meshaal claimed that the terms...

Qatar hosts three major US military bases on its territory. And it is becoming one of the most important clients for US military contractors. Earlier this year Qatar signed an $11.4 billion dollar arms agreement with the US. At the same time, according to the Calacalist report, Qatar is the major bankroller of ISIS and al Nusra in Syria and Iraq. It gives $50 million a month to jihadists in Libya. It gives Hamas $100m. in annual aid. And in the past two years Doha has provided Hamas with an additional $620m. dollars, including $250m. it transferred to Hamas leader...

Israel on Friday ordered some of its diplomatic staff in Turkey to leave the country for security reasons, after protesters angered by its assault on Gaza sought to storm Israeli embassy buildings. Turkish protesters overnight tried to break into the ambassador's residence in Ankara as well as the consulate in Istanbul, with the diplomatic controversy over the Gaza assault risking a new crisis in relations between Turkey and the Jewish state. "Foreign Minister (Avigdor) Lieberman issued a statement... following the demonstrations and instructed the Israeli consulate and embassy to reduce their diplomatic staff in Turkey," an Israeli embassy spokesman told...

Foreign Minister Sameh Shukri says Cairo's offer 'provides the needs of all sides.' Egypt does not have any plans to revise its ceasefire proposal to end the fighting in Gaza, Foreign Minister Sameh Shukrisaid in a joint press conference with his French counterpart Laurent Fabius in Cairo. "It provides the needs of all sides and we will continue to offer it, hoping to get their support as soon as possible," said Shukri, referring to the initiative rejected by Hamas. On Friday, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas asked France to use its influence on Hamas allies such as Turkey and Qatar to...

Analysis: Israel's intelligence community sees Cairo as only real platform capable of influencing Hamas. With all the chatter incessantly coming out of the mouths of experts sitting in air-conditioned television studios and offering their different solutions to the Hamas problem, it's really hard to understand what is going on behind the scenes. But there is one thing we can all agree on: The news about a ceasefire will come from one place only – Cairo. The common estimate among the decision makers is that the Egyptians are the only ones who can end the fighting. The Egyptian capital serves as...

Document widely rejected but still being pushed by emirate; was drawn up when Hamas, Qatar thought Israeli ground offensive unlikely. Qatar has drafted its own version of a truce offer between Israel and Hamas, The Times of Israel has learned – and it adopts almost all of Hamas’s demands. The document underscores the power struggle being waged behind the scenes of the Gaza conflict between Cairo’s new leadership and Turkey and Qatar — two countries which supported the Muslim Brotherhood’s rule in Egypt and its ousted president Mohammed Morsi. Hamas is an offshoot of the Muslim Brotherhood, which was removed...

Palestinian and other Arab commentators are blasting Egypt's cease-fire offer this week in the Israeli-Gazan fighting, saying it was a gift to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who accepted it, and a trap for Hamas, which rejected it. Azmi Bishara, the fugitive former Knesset member who now heads the Arab Center for Research and Policy in Doha, Qatar, wrote in the pan-Arab alaraby.co.uk that the offer gave no relief to Gaza, nor freedom for the Hamas members recently returned to Israeli prisons. "This Egyptian declaration represents a stab in the back to the resistance and the people of Gaza. … [T]his...

Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton proposed that Qatar – the chief financier of Hamas – could play a key role in mediating peace between the Israelis and Palestinians. Clinton, during an interview with Charlie Rose, touted Qatar as a country that could play a constructive role in arbitrating peace between Hamas and Israel, which recently launched a full-scale ground incursion into Gaza in an attempt to cut off the terror group’s access to sophisticated weaponry. Qatar, which has served as Hamas’ chief financial lifeline, keeping the group afloat and facilitating its arms buildup, could convince Hamas to stop trying...

Haaretz learned that Lieberman told Borg Brende, Norway’s Minister of Foreign Affairs, who is visiting Israel, that Hamas lied when it said Cairo had not sent it the cease-fire proposal, which Israel initially accepted. He said Egyptian intelligence officials had given the details of the initiative to Mousa Abu-Marzook, head of the Hamas mission in Cairo. Meanwhile, Israel agreed on Wednesday night to a request from Robert Serry, the UN Special Coordinator for the Middle East for UNRWA, to a five-hour cease-fire on Thursday in order to allow humanitarian aid into the Gaza Strip. “Hamas was ready to consider the...

Qatar, the world’s top liquefied natural gas exporter, is using its gas money to cash in on some top-of-the-line U.S. supplied military hardware. Qatar’s defense minister, Hamad Bin Ali al-Attiyah, met with Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel and signed acceptance letters for $11 billion worth of Apache attack helicopters, Patriot missile defense batteries and anti-tank Javelin missiles, the Pentagon said in a statement Monday. “Today’s signing ceremony underscores the strong partnership between the United States and Qatar in the area of security and defense and will help improve our bilateral cooperation across a range of military operations,” said Rear Adm....

With the rise of Islamist organizations, repressive regimes, and civil conflicts which threaten regional stability, the promise of the Arab Spring of 2011 quickly devolved into an Arab winter. In an expansive article in The Economist, the threat to the Middle East is discussed in appropriately grave terms; Syria and Iraq are in flames while Jordan looms as the next domino to potentially fall. Libya and Yemen, where Islamic terror networks operate with impunity, are labeled “failed states.” Those Middle Eastern nations that are not in danger of imminent collapse are either absolute monarchies or counties which merely maintain...

Foreign Minister Avigdor Liberman is demanding the eviction of UN Middle East envoy Robert Serry from Israel, on suspicion that he has been trying to assist Hamas. Liberman intends to declare Serry persona non grata, the most serious form of censure which a country can apply to foreign diplomats. Channel 2 reported that the Foreign Ministry has received information according to which Serry is attempting to transfer millions of dollars to Hamas. Serry reportedly asked Palestinian Authority head Mahmoud Abbas to transfer $20 million from Qatar to Gaza – a request Abbas turned down. He then asked Israel to be...

Did you hear? After a 90 year interlude, the world finally got back its caliphate. As of June 2014, there is once again an Islamic State in the Middle East. Matter of fact, it was formed by a group now going by "Islamic State," or simply IS. Before changing their name to something that most Americans will pronounce as "Iz," they were previously known as ISIS, the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (or Sham). ISIS itself grew out of a coalition between the Islamic State of Iraq, or ISI, and the Syrian rebels. The original ISI, in this case,...

The Emir of Qatar has reportedly agreed to roll out €2.2 billion ($2.99 bn) to convert Barcelona's Monumental bullring into a 40,000-capacity mosque, the biggest in Europe, by 2020, if the city council approves the project. The building would include a 300m high minaret which may become the third largest in the world after those in Mecca and Medina, reports 20 Minutos, Spain's most-read general newspaper, citing its sources close to the project. The mosque for Barcelona’s Muslims will also have a conference hall, a Koran study center, housing up to 300 people, and a museum of Islamic art and...

What’s the difference between Iraq today and Libya in 2011? Qatar, the tiny Gulf state sponsor of terror, was for intervention in Libya, but is against intervention in Iraq. In Libya, Obama preemptively ordered NATO airstrikes on the forces of Muammar Gaddafi, allegedly to prevent genocide. Obama explained this reasoning in a speech on March 28, 2011, saying that he acted to stop a massacre that would have “stained the conscience of the world.” Obama continued, “I refused to wait for the images of slaughter and mass graves before taking action.” In Iraq today, we have photos and videos of...

A Saudi man travelled to Qatar and killed a man who murdered his brother nearly 37 years ago, fulfilling his tribe’s long-standing wish to avenge his death. Sada newspaper said the unnamed Saudi managed to identify his brother’s Yemeni killer and locate his whereabouts in Qatar, where he had got the citizenship. “He travelled to Qatar after getting information on where his brother’s killer lives…he went straight to that man and killed him,” the paper said. It said the Saudi man’s tribe intended to stage a big party to celebrate the killer’s death but was stopped by the Prince of...

Pipeline Predicament: The Ukraine-Syria-Russia-U.S. gas nexus On Line: 18 March 2014 16:21 In Print: Wednesday 19 March 2014 “The past five years have demonstrated that the U.S. president does not have any ethical dimension for his foreign policy - Syria is one example - let alone the question of intervening to uphold the principle of non-aggression against a sovereign state.” Marwan Kabalan, political analyst at the Doha Institute. The recent U.S.-backed coup that toppled the former government in Ukraine has been couched in the noble rhetoric of democracy, humanitarian intervention and self-determination, but a closer examination reveals an ugly underside...

When Americans think of the Middle East, they usually think Israel, Palestine, religious wars, terrorism, etc. But few appreciate how permeated the Middle East is with drugs, and how these drugs are related to terrorism and politics in the region. Indeed, in March 2012, the academic journal Terrorism and Political Violence published a special issue dedicated to the relationship between organized crime and terrorism. A series of essays details the overlapping interests of drug cartels and political terrorists. For the quickest explanation what brings these types together, one needs only to identify the common trait between a good terrorist, and...