The future of Qatar hangs in the balance this week.
For over four months, the Emirate has struggled under the burden of a multi-national blockade led by Saudi Arabia. focused on pressuring Qatar to cease itsfunding of terror groups throughout the region.Just days ago, though, U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson embarked on a diplomatic mission to ease the dispute, stopping first in Saudi Arabia and then, on Sunday, in the Qatari capital of Doha.
Though the Secretary of State expressed an eagerness to end the blockade and restore unity to the Gulf, the news he brought Qatar on Sunday was anything but promising.
“In my meetings with [Saudi] Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, I asked him to please engage in dialogue,” he began. However, Tillerson went on to lament that “there is not a strong indication that parties are ready to talk yet.”
Summing up the futility of his trip, he said “We cannot force talks upon people who are not ready to talk.”
And so, the blockade will go on.
Let it remain. So long as Qatar continues to support Hamas, it’s not a bad thing.
Why? Because ultimately, the blockade is working. To understand just how effective it has been, you don’t even have to check the news.
You could, instead, see it on the commercial reels of your favorite television shows or even on the streets of London and New York.
Last June, Qatar introduced a novelty in commercial advertising when it took out unmistakably political TV ads for its national airline. Instead of describing the luxuries of the first class seating or the host of international destinations, this Qatar Airways ad decried the airspace boundaries being enforced against it.
“There should be no borders up here,” said a voice against a blue, cloudy sky. “As an airline, we don’t believe in boundaries, we believe in bringing people together.” How the funding of genocidal militants like Hamas serves to ‘bring people together’ was left unclear.
For the past few months, as well, if one were to Google any term related to Qatar, the first website offered would be, interestingly, lifttheblockade.com. (Almost comically, just beneath it was a link to counterextremism.org, leading to a site that showcases all of the available evidence of Qatar’s support for terrorism.)
Then, just last week, walking down Central Park West, I noticed yet another ad above the roof of a taxi cab, with the words “Lift the Blockade Against the People of Qatar” printed in large block-letters above images of a fence and barbed wire. In London, Qatar took its campaign a step further, painting the same ad across the entire sides of London’s iconic black cabs. Though Al Jazeera, Qatar’s state-funded news service, claimed the campaign was an initiative of London’s transportation services, the truth was that Qatar had simply paid for it.
Qatar is obviously doing all it can to break the blockade. Which, in turn, means that the blockade is working.
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