DOHA'S GAZA SUMMIT -- QATAR LURCHES TOWARD THE

C O N F I D E N T I A L SECTION 01 OF 03 DOHA 000042

SIPDIS

E.O. 12958: DECL: 01/19/2028
TAGS: PREL PGOV PHUM PTER QA
SUBJECT: DOHA'S GAZA SUMMIT -- QATAR LURCHES TOWARD THE
RADICAL CAMP

Classified By: Classified by: Amb. Joseph LeBaron, reasons 1.4 (b) and
(d).

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(C) Key Points and Comments
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-- Having failed to achieve a quorum to hold an emergency
Arab League summit, Qatar went ahead anyway with what it
could get: an international gathering that included
hardliners, rejectionists, and terrorist groups. Qatar
started out seeking broad Arab League participation and
consensus. It ended up with primarily, but not/not
exclusively, representatives from the radical Islamic camp.

-- Clearly, the Doha emergency summit on January 16 was not a
bid to find a unified Arab position on Israel's offensive in
Gaza. In one sense, the truncated summit was an expression
of Qatari emotion, ego and ideology. Qatar's leadership is
deeply angry over the Israeli offensive, and it has true
compassion for the associated civilian suffering.

-- Qatar's leadership also has the growing confidence that,
if necessary, it has the skills, tools, resources, and
influence to lead an effective Arab response to the Gaza
fighting. And, in positioning itself to lead such a
response, Qatar believes it will both advance its standing in
Arab public opinion and be seen as a champion of it.

-- Both are important to Qatar's government, since it wants
to protect itself from the heavy criticism other Arab
governments are taking from the Arab street for the perceived
inaction and fecklessness.

-- If there was a silver lining to the summit, it is this:
there was very little focus on the United States or criticism
of it, even though Iranian President Ahmedinejad and other
radical hardliners implacably opposed to U.S. policies in the
region were there.

-- That said, Qatar's actions at the summit, including
announcing its decision to close the Israeli Trade Office,
expel Israeli diplomats, and freeze ties with Israel after 12
years, provide further evidence that the Qatari leadership is
careening towards the radical camp. We must proceed
carefully with Qatar's leadership in nudging Qatar back to a
policy of broad regional engagement and mediation that
brings it much closer to us.

-- Embassy Doha presents in septel a gameplan through
February to help accomplish that.

End Key Points and Comments.


1. (C) Besides the host, Qatar's Amir Hamad bin Khalifa Al
Thani, six Arab League heads of state attended:

Syrian President Bashar al-Assad,
Lebanese President Michel Suleiman,
Sudanese President Omar Hasan al-Bashir,
Algerian President Abdel Aziz Bouteflika,
Mauritanian coup leader, General Mohamed Ould Abdul Aziz,
Comoros President Ahmed Abdullah Sambi.


2. (U) In all, the Doha meeting assembled representatives of
13 of the Arab League's 22 members, including Iraq's Vice
President Tareq al-Hashemi. Iranian President Ahmadinejad
and Senagalese President Wad were there. Turkey also took
part, with Ankara sending an aide to Turkish Prime Minister
Recep Tayyip Erdogan, according to one press report.


3. (C) The official attendees included the Popular Front for
the Liberation of Palestine, a U.S.-listed terrorist group;
and the Palestinian Islamic Jihad, a group officially
designated as a terrorist organization by the United States,
the EU, the UK, Japan, and others. Hamas Politburo Chief
Khalid Mishal was given a prominent role.


4. (C) Iran, Nigeria, and others were invited to come at the
last minute, and they did, headlined by Iranian President
Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud
Abbas stayed away from the conference. Egypt, Saudi Arabia,
and several other Arab countries, including Qatar's fellow
GCC members, boycotted the conference.


5. (C) The resident diplomatic corps, including the U.S.
Ambassador, was invited to attend the opening ceremony at the
iconic Sheraton Hotel, where Qatar hosted in 1982 the first
GCC Summit. Given the USG's opposition to the emergency Doha
summit on Gaza, Ambassador declined to attend.


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6. (C) The final communique, issued at the end of the
day-long conference, was in the name of only the attending
Arab states, including Iraq. Among the more significant
points of the communique:


A. The intent to pursue criminal prosecution of "Israel and
its officials" through international and national courts for
committing "aggression, war crimes and genocide" in Gaza and
to seek compensation for those acts in civil suits.

Note 1: Doha already is organizing a follow-on international
conference on Israeli "war crimes." It was announced January
17 that The Arab Democracy Foundation in Qatar and Qatar's
National Committee for Human Rights will host a two-day
international conference February 20-21 "to mobilize the
world community against the war crimes being committed by
Israel." Organizers claim 120 Arab and international legal
experts, journalists, and activists from various
non-governmental organizations are likely to attend.

Note 2: The February 20 conference is scheduled to occur
immediately after the U.S.-Islamic World Forum, an annual
gathering that, at least in the past, has attracted some of
our most prominent Americans to Doha.

Note 3: The Organization of the Islamic Conference may soon
hold a conference of its own on Israeli actions in Gaza. The
summit communique welcomed the call at the conference by
Senegalese President Wad, the OIC President, to convene an
OIC Emergency Summit to consider "the brutal Israeli
aggression" against Gaza. End notes.


B. The agreement to establish a reconstruction fund for Gaza.

Note: Qatar has already promised $250 million for the fund.
Importantly, Qatar has not described the mechanism it will
use for channeling that aid to Gaza. It is quite possible
that Qatar will bypass the Palestinian Authority altogether,
just as it bypassed the Lebanese central government when
Qatar provided relief to southern Lebanon following the 2006
war there. End note.


C. The call upon the Palestinian parties to reach consensus
and achieve Palestinian national reconciliation.

Note: This appeal could be an opening for Qatar to help
mediate between the Palestinian Authority and Hamas. Please
see discussion below in paras. 8-14 on Qatar's role in the
region: that of a regional leader or that of a regional
mediator. End note.


D. The call to suspend the Arab Peace Initiative that was
adopted at the Arab Summit held in Beirut in 2002, and to
cease all forms of normalization with Israel, including the
reconsideration of diplomatic and economic relations.

Note: Qatar and Mauritania had already moved to freeze their
relations with Israel, and the communique commended the two
for that. Roi Rosenblit, the head of Israel's Trade Office
in Doha, called Ambassador January 18 to say that he had just
been told by the MFA that he had one week to close the office
and leave the country. Rosenblit asked for Embassy Doha's
help in closing down the Trade Office, and Ambassador agreed
to supply it. End note.


7. (C) In his speech at the conference, Ahmedinejad issued
seven demands. They included immediate termination of
Israeli attacks over the Gaza Strip, closure of Israel's
missions and trade offices in Arab and Islamic countries, and
an economic boycott of Israeli goods. Ahmedinejad criticized
the UN Security Council as just a tool for the United States
and Britain during the 2006 war in Lebanon and now in Gaza.
But his references to the United States were actually quite
few.

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POLICY DISCUSSION AND ANALYSIS
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8. (C) Doha's Gaza summit represents more evidence of a
recent turn by Qatar from a focus on broad regional
engagement and mediation to a drive for a regional leadership
role. Qatar once prided itself on having relationships
across the ideological spectrum in the larger Middle East.
Now it is freezing relations with Israel, expelling Israeli
diplomats, and closing Israel's Trade Office after 12 years.
Qatar's ties are fraying badly (once again) with Egypt and
Saudi Arabia


9. (C) With these steps, Qatar has taken actions that
undermine -- contradict, actually -- its broad engagement

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strategy in the region and elsewhere. That will hurt Qatar's
Darfur Initiative, which needs Egypt's support, if it is to
succeed.


10. (C) More broadly, Qatar's drive for a regional leadership
role will make it more difficult for Qatar to be an effective
regional mediator. States with sufficient strategic weight
can both lead and mediate, of course. But Qatar lacks that
strategic weight. In Qatar's drive to lead, it alienates the
very parties it needs in order to be an effective mediator.
In short, Qatar's desire to lead will be at the expense of
its more attainable, worthwhile role as a mediator in the
region.


11. (C) Moreover, the relatively small number of states and
organizations that accept Qatar's leadership is routinely
opposed to USG policies in the region, often violently so.
Thus, the more that Qatar focuses on leadership, the more
likely Qatar and the USG will find themselves at odds.


12. (C) In a way, Qatar also is getting drawn in by the
radical camp. Qatar sees its wealth in part as a ticket to
big-time diplomacy. And various parties in the region, and
even further afield, want to exploit -- even pander to --
Qatar's diplomatic ambitions in order to tap into Qatar's
money.


13. (C) To build on an observation by NYT columnist David
Brooks in a recent op-ed about human nature and behavioral
economics, the USG needs to keep in mind that a complex
combination of emotion, ego, strategy, ideology, religion,
habit, memory, and principle is involved in much of Al Thani
thinking, and in many Al Thani decisions, about Gaza, Hamas,
and the Israeli-Palestinian issue.


14. (C) To counter this set of conditions diplomatically, the
USG will need to encourage the Amir to focus his energy,
strategies and policies on a return to broad regional
engagement and mediation, where the common ground between
Qatar and the United States is greater and can be expanded
still further. Please see septel for Embassy Doha's
recommendations on what immediate steps the USG can take
towards that end.
LeBaron