Standing tall like Caesar? Qatar’s unwavering voice for Palestine at the United Nations

Abstract

This article examines the complexities of Qatar’s Palestine policy, emphasising Doha’s multifaceted role as a mediator, problem-solver, humanitarian aid provider, and representative of the Palestinian issue at the United Nations. The study employs a mixed-methods research approach. Firstly, it utilises qualitative data from official statements, key policymakers’ remarks, and literature on Qatar’s foreign policy and Palestinian engagement. Secondly, it introduces text analytic methods such as latent Dirichlet allocation (LDA) topic modelling, word clouds and network analysis to identify key themes, relationships and trends in Qatar’s speeches. The findings reveal that the Palestinian issue has been a prominent and consistent topic in Qatar’s United Nations General Assembly General Debate addresses over the past five decades. Qatar has consistently advocated for a resolution to the conflict, emphasising the importance of peace, justice and the two-state solution. Qatar’s support for Palestine remains steadfast, despite pressure from other regional actors to end its engagement with Hamas and divert its attention from the Palestinian issue. This commitment to the Palestinian cause aligns with Qatar’s broader state preferences for an independent foreign policy, its opposition to external interference, and its aspiration to restore its role as a trusted international partner on global platforms.

Keywords:

• Qatar
• Palestine
• UNGA
• general debates
• text analysis

Acknowledgements

Open Access funding provided by the Qatar National Library. The authors express their gratitude to Nihat Mugurtay, Jad Salha and Orcun Demir for providing valuable research assistance. The insightful comments and suggestions offered by two anonymous reviewers and the editor considerably enhanced the quality of this manuscript.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Data availability statement

The data that support the findings of this study are available from the corresponding author upon request.

Notes

1 “Why Is Qatar Often a Mediator and What Is Its Role in Israel–Hamas War?” Guardian, 21 November 2023, available at https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/nov/21/why-is-qatar-often-a-mediator-and-what-is-its-role-in-israel-Hamas-war

2 “Qatar: Hamas Office in Doha Cannot Be Closed Due to Its Importance in Ending the Conflict,” Middle East Monitor, 30 October 2023, at https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/20231030-qatar-Hamas-office-in-doha-cannot-be-closed-due-to-its-importance-in-ending-the-conflict/

3 “Qatar Continues to Enhance Status as Trusted International Partner, Source of Energy: PM,” Doha News, 23 May 2023, available at https://www.qatar-tribune.com/article/65922/latest-news/qatar-continues-to-enhance-status-as-trusted-international-partner-source-of-energy-pm

4 Ian Black, “Gaza Split Prompts Arab Countries to Boycott Emergency Summit,” Guardian, 15 January 2009, at https://www.theguardian.com/world/2009/jan/15/gaza-egypt-saudi-qatar-summit

5 Ziyad Clot, “Why I Blew the Whistle about Palestine,” Guardian, 14 May 2011, at https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2011/may/14/blew-the-whistle-about-palestine

6 Robert Danin, “The Doha Palestinian Unity Agreement: Now the Hard Part,” Council of Foreign Affairs, 6 February 2012, at https://www.cfr.org/blog/doha-palestinian-unity-agreement-now-hard-part

7 Amena Bakr, “Qatar Seeks Role as Gaza Mediator, Israel Wary,” Reuters, 17 July 2014, available at https://www.reuters.com/article/idUSKBN0FM2GD/

8 “Operation Protective Edge: Israel’s July 2014 Assault on Gaza,” Arab Center for Research and Policy Studies, 13 July 2014, at https://www.dohainstitute.org/en/PoliticalStudies/pages/operation_protective_edge_israels_july_2014_assault_on_gaza.aspx

9 Nicholas Watt, “Gaza conflict: Brown Finds His Feet at Sharm el-Sheikh,” Guardian, 18 January 2009, at https://www.theguardian.com/news/blog/2009/jan/18/gordon-brown-egypt-gaza-israel-the-palestinian-territories

10 Calculated from OECD Statistics DAC2a: “Aid (ODA) Disbursements to Countries and Regions [DAC2a],” n.d, OECD.Stat. at https://stats.oecd.org/

11 Calculated from OECD Statistics, Yemen and Syria get US $4.39 million and $31 million, while Palestine received $229 million from Qatar in 2020.

12 “Qatar Rules out Normalization of Israel Ties for Now,” AP News, 4 December 2020, available at https://apnews.com/article/bahrain-israel-italy-united-arab-emirates-qatar-7a1b9defebe7c8f2efeda54403b265e9

13 See Qatar Tribune, 2 December 2020.

14 “Introducing BERTopic Integration with the Hugging Face Hub,” n.d., available at https://huggingface.co/blog/bertopic

15 67th sess. [25 September 2012]: A/67/PV.6: Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa Al-Thani.

16 77th sess. [20 September 2022]: A/76/PV.3: Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al-Thani.

17 72nd sess. [19 September 2017]: A/72/PV.4: Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al-Thani.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Bülent Aras

Bülent Aras is Research Director at the Center for International Policy Research. He is also Senior Scholar and Coordinator of the Conflict Resolution and Mediation stream at Istanbul Policy Center and Research Professor of international relations at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. He specialises in text analytics of political narratives, foreign aid, mediation and conflict resolution, and international security. His recent writings include Geopolitics of the New Middle East (Routledge, 2023), Turkey’s State Crisis (Syracuse University Press, 2021), and Turkey, the Arab Spring and Beyond (Routledge, 2019). His articles have appeared in Middle East Policy, Third World Quarterly, Political Science Quarterly, International Journal, Nationalism and Ethnic Politics and Security Dialogue, among others.

Majed Al Ansari

Majed Al-Ansari is Director of the Center for International Research in Doha, Qatar. He specialises in GCC foreign and security policies, MENA regional issues, development/humanitarian aid, international security, and conflict resolution. He is author of a book titled ‘Minority of Citizens: The Effects of Religious, Social and Political Values on Trust in Immigrants in Qatar’ published in 2020. He also wrote on ‘The Unbridgeable Gulf: Applying Bennett’s Model of Analysis to the 2017 Gulf Crisis’ in the Journal of Balkan and Near Eastern Studies in 2021, ‘The New Gulf Order: Crisis, Mediation, and Reconciliation’ in Middle East Policy in 2021, and ‘Qatar’s Foreign Aid and Least Developed Countries’ published in Alternatives: Global, Local, Political in 2022.