ollowing the assassination of Hamas political chief Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran in late July, Hamas's de facto foreign minister Khaled Meshal was the presumed frontrunner in the contest for succession. In a surprising twist, Hamas elevated Gaza leader and October 7 mastermind Yahya Sinwar instead.
Snubbed and marginalized, Meshal appeared destined for irrelevance. But desperate times call for desperate measures. Last week, Meshal urged Palestinians in the West Bank to resume "attacks of self-sacrifice"—i.e., suicide bombings—against Israelis.
Meshal is a U.S. Specially Designated Global Terrorist, a label that comes with legal and economic consequences. Yet he has found refuge in Qatar, a purported U.S. ally. In fact, the Biden administration persuaded Congress in 2022 to elevate Qatar to the status of Major Non-NATO Ally.
It's time for the White House to up the ante and demand that Doha act like a genuine ally and extradite one of the world's most wanted terrorists.
Meshal is a founding father of Hamas. He originally led the terror group's office in Kuwait before moving to Jordan in 1990. In 1997, the Mossad attempted to poison Meshal on the streets of Amman. When Jordanian authorities captured two of the Israeli operatives, Israel turned over the antidote after Jordan's King Hussein threatened to sever diplomatic ties and try the captured agents if Meshal died.
Two years later, amidst mounting diplomatic pressure, Jordan expelled Hamas. Meshal relocated with the rest of the terror group's senior leadership to Damascus, where he ascended to the top of Hamas's chain of command. He became the group's political chief in 2004 after Israel assassinated Hamas founder Sheikh Ahmad Yassin and his deputy, Abdel Aziz Rantisi.
Meshal left Syria in 2012. Despite its longstanding alliance with the Iran-backed Assad regime, Hamas did not want to be associated with the slaughter of Syrians trying to bring down the regime. Meshal and other Hamas leaders settled in Qatar, where he remains to this day.
Meshal's tenure as political leader ended when Hamas handed the reins over to Ismail Haniyeh in 2017. But from his base in Doha, Meshal has continued to serve as a senior official in Hamas's politburo. He became the group's chief envoy in 2021.
Through it all, Meshal has remained defiantly vitriolic. During the 2014 Gaza conflict which Hamas initiated, he accused Israel of carrying out "a holocaust worse than the one perpetrated by Hitler." In 2018, he celebrated the historical success of "suicide missions, martyrdom operations, popular resistance, stones, knives and firebombs" against Israelis. Two years later, he called for "vehicle ramming attacks" and stabbings in the West Bank.
On October 11 last year—four days after Hamas murdered 1,200 Israelis and kidnapped some 250 more—Meshal encouraged the Muslim world to keep killing Israelis. He said this was "a moment" for scholars and students of "jihad" to turn their word into deed, adding that neighboring countries including Jordan, Syria, Lebanon, and Egypt had an even greater responsibility to pick up the sword.
Such inflammatory rhetoric is common from Hamas's leadership. What's remarkable is that Meshal has been issuing these calls from Qatar for more than a decade. And Qatar has not been held to account. Former Qatari Foreign Minister Khalid bin Mohammed Al Attiyah once defended him as a "dear guest of Qatar."
Qatar isn't some humble refuge for Meshal. The terror chief lives like royalty in Doha, where he has amassed a staggering net worth of approximately $4 billion.
Beyond that, Qatar offers Meshal legitimacy and a global platform. That was clear in 2017, when Meshal unveiled a new Hamas guidance document at a press conference in Doha. Meshal said Hamas was "ready to support" a Palestinian state along the June 1967 borders. But the document was merely a re-branding exercise. Hamas never altered its 1988 charter, which calls for the annihilation of Israel.
Bizarrely, for the past eleven months, Washington and much of the international community has viewed Qatar as an honest broker in the effort to secure a ceasefire in Gaza and the release of the Israeli hostages. This is both ridiculous and dangerous. Indeed, the wealthy Gulf emirate has not only housed Hamas leaders for more than a decade; it has showered Hamas with hundreds of millions of dollars.
Qatar should not be touted as a Major Non-NATO Ally and host America's Combined Air Operations Center while also hosting Hamas. Hosting and funding Hamas actually qualifies Qatar as a state sponsor of terrorism.
At a minimum, Washington should place significant pressure on Qatar to extradite Khaled Meshal, among other Hamas leaders. Legally, such a move is more than justified and long overdue. Such pressure would begin to reset the relationship between Washington and Doha and perhaps set the stage for Qatar to jettison leaders from Al-Qaeda, the Taliban, the Islamic State, and other malign actors. The move might also put residual pressure on Hamas to release the remaining hostages in Gaza and end the current crisis—something that Qatar has repeatedly failed to do.