Hamas may be forced to close its offices in Qatar, after the US told the tiny Gulf state that allowing the militant Islamist group to have a base there is no longer acceptable.
Qatar, a key US partner in the Middle East, has hosted the political office of Hamas for more than a decade and allowed many senior leaders of the organisation to live there.
The request was reported by Reuters late on Friday but has yet to be officially confirmed.
“After rejecting repeated proposals to release hostages, [Hamas] leaders should no longer be welcome in the capitals of any American partner. We made that clear to Qatar following Hamas’s rejection weeks ago of another hostage release proposal,” the senior official told Reuters, speaking on the condition of anonymity.
Critics of the US request say it will hinder engagement with elements of Hamas potentially more inclined to compromise, and could boost the influence of more hostile states, such as Iran, over the group.
Hamas still holds about 100 hostages seized during its surprise attack into Israel last October. Multiple rounds of negotiations aimed at securing an end to the 13 month-long war in Gaza have failed.
The small but influential Gulf state has been a key intermediary in the talks to broker a ceasefire and is likely to comply with the US request, analysts said. The US official told Reuters that Qatar, which is designated as a major non-Nato ally by Washington, passed on the demand to Hamas leaders about 10 days ago.
Hamas leaders have been preparing for many months to leave Qatar, with Turkey and Iraq suggested as possible alternatives. The group recently opened a political office in Baghdad.
Hamas officials denied Qatar has told the organisation to leave and there has been no reaction from Qatar’s foreign ministry to the reports.
The request to Qatar comes amid a flurry of activity as the administation of the US president, Joe Biden, prepares a final effort to end Israeli assaults in Gaza and Lebanon before handing over power to Donald Trump, who has said he too wants to see an end to the conflict.
However, there is no immediate sign that any breakthrough is possible. In previous rounds of talks, disagreements over whether any ceasefire would be definitive and the withdrawal of Israeli troops from Gaza have blocked a deal.
Observers have blamed Yahya Sinwar, the leader of Hamas, and the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, for the failure to end the conflict, saying Sinwar did not want to stop fighting that was damaging Israel’s international standing and Netanyahu deliberately torpedoed successive potential deals for domestic political reasons.
Qatar has hosted Hamas’s political leaders since 2012 when the group left Damascus after falling out with the Syrian regime. The US supported the move at the time, believing it would allow a useful channel of communication to Hamas.
Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al Thani, Qatar’s prime minister, has said repeatedly over the past year that the Hamas office exists in Doha to allow negotiations with the group.
But after last year’s attack from Gaza on southern Israel, in which Hamas killed 1,200 people and abducted 250 others, the US secretary of state, Antony Blinken, told leaders in Qatar and elsewhere in the region there could be “no more business as usual” with Hamas.
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On Friday, 14 Republican US senators wrote a letter to the department of state asking Washington to immediately freeze the assets of Hamas officials living in Qatar, extradite several senior Hamas officials living there, and ask authorities to end its hospitality to the group’s senior leadership.
Israel’s offensive in the Gaza Strip has killed more than 43,000 Palestinians, reduced the territory to a wasteland and led to a humanitarian catastrophe.
Gaza’s civil defence agency said on Saturday that Israeli airstrikes had killed at least 14 Palestinians overnight, including women and children, while the Israeli military said it had killed dozens of Hamas militants.
An airstrike hit tents housing displaced Palestinians in the southern area of Khan Younis, killing at least nine people, including children and women, Mahmud Bassal, a civil defence spokesperson, told AFP.
A second airstrike killed five people, including children, and injured about 22 when “Israeli warplanes hit Fahad Al-Sabah school”, which had been turned into a shelter for “thousands of displaced people” in the Al-Tuffah district of Gaza City, Bassal said.
In recent months, the Israeli military has struck several schools that have been turned into shelters where Israel has said Palestinian militants are operating.
Meanwhile, the Israeli military said its troops killed “dozens of terrorists” in the Jabalia area of northern Gaza, where it has been conducting a sweeping air and ground operation.
Much of northern Gaza has been under siege for weeks. The Israeli military denies systematically trying to force Palestinians from the area to flee to the relative safety of the south of the strip.