HH The Father Amir Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa Al-Thani was the first Arab leader to visit Gaza strip after the establishment of the Palestinian Authority in 199. During his visit, he was welcomed by the late Palestinian President Yasser Arafat. This visit brought hope to the people of Gaza, as it marked a new beginning and a glimpse of optimism for over 1.7 million citizens who had endured years of Israeli blockade and the devastating Israeli military operation in 2008. This operation caused extensive destruction to both human and physical infrastructure, including homes, mosques, schools, hospitals, civil and military government facilities and infrastructure.
As part of its national role in supporting the Palestinian cause and promoting Arab solidarity, the capital of Qatar, Doha, hosted three Arab summits. One of them was the Doha Emergency Summit held in January 2009, which was named the “Gaza Summit.” During this summit, Arab leaders called for suspending the Arab Peace Initiative, halting all forms of normalization with Israel, and establishing a fund for the reconstruction of Gaza. .
Doha Emergency Summit, in its concluding statement, condemned Israel for its aggression on Gaza and demanded an immediate cessation of all forms of aggression and an immediate withdrawal of Israeli forces from Gaza. The statement also stressed the necessity of immediately and permanently opening the border crossings, and allowing all humanitarian aid to enter and distribute it freely within the Strip.
Qatar’s support for Al-Aqsa Mosque was strong and evident. In 2013, during the Arab Summit held in Doha, Qatar launched an initiative to create a fund named “Support for Jerusalem” with a budget of one billion dollars. During the Arab Economic Summit held in Kuwait in January 2009, Qatar declared its support for the Gaza Strip with a quarter-billion dollars to participate in the reconstruction of Gaza after the 2008 aggression. In the Cairo conference that took place in October 2014, after the war initiated by Israel on the Gaza Strip that summer, Qatar pledged one billion dollars for the reconstruction of the region.
Qatar is keen to pay its annual share to support the Palestinian Authority. It also continues to provide a lot of humanitarian aid to the residents of the Gaza Strip, the West Bank, and Jerusalem, through Qatari charitable societies, in addition to its contributions to supporting Palestinian educational institutions. It also received Palestinian teachers to work on its territory, and continued to support UNRWA, to enable it to fulfill its mission of relief and employment for Palestinian refugees in refugee camps.
The State of Qatar also established a residential city to accommodate the victims of the war on Gaza, and a hospital for prosthetic limbs, as part of dozens of service projects and facilities that Qatar provides to the residents of the Strip under the supervision of the Qatar’s Gaza Reconstruction Committee in all medical, humanitarian, services, health, education, housing, agriculture and electricity sectors.
At the level of Palestinian reconciliation, Doha led great efforts to end the division and achieve reconciliation between the Fatah and Hamas movements. On the humanitarian level, Qatar was the first to host fifteen Palestinian prisoners who were liberated as part of a prisoner exchange deal in 2011. They were among 40 prisoners whom Israel stipulated to be deported outside the Palestinian territories, out of a total of 477 who were released.
Source: Qatar News Agency
