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DUBAI: Saudi Arabia will open its airspace and land border to Qatar Monday night in the first step in ending a years-long diplomatic crisis that deeply divided America’s defense partners, frayed social ties and shattered a traditionally shared alliance of the Gulf states.
Qatar’s only land border has been mostly closed since mid-2017, when Saudi Arabia, Egypt, the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain launched a blocking against the tiny Gulf State, accusing it of supporting extremist Islamist groups and having warm ties to Iran. The Saudi border, on which Qatar relied for the importation of dairy products, building materials and other goods, was briefly opened for the past three years to allow Qataris to enter Saudi Arabia for the Islamic Hajj pilgrimage.
It was unclear what concessions Qatar had made or promised to make regarding a change in its policies.
Kuwait, which had been mediating throughout the dispute, was the first to announce the diplomatic advance through its foreign minister. Earlier on Monday, the foreign minister reportedly traveled to Doha to deliver a message to the ruling emir of Qatar, Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani.
While the Saudi decision marks an important milestone in resolving the Gulf dispute, the path to full reconciliation is far from guaranteed. The gap between Abu Dhabi and Doha has been deeper, with the United Arab Emirates and Qatar in great ideological difficulties.
Following Kuwait’s announcement, the UAE Minister of State for Foreign Affairs Anwar Gargash tweeted that his country wanted to restore the unity of the Gulf. However, he warned: “We have more work to do and we are heading in the right direction.”
Saudi Arabia’s lifting of the embargo paves the way for the ruler of Qatar to attend an annual summit of Gulf leaders on Tuesday to be held in the former desert site of the kingdom of Al-Ula. The summit would traditionally be chaired by Saudi King Salman, although his son and heir, the crown prince, could lead the meeting.
Qatari state media confirmed on Monday night that Sheikh Tamim will attend the summit, a move that analysts say would have been nationally sensitive to him if the Saudi blockade had still been in place.
This year, the Egyptian president has also been invited to attend the summit of the six-nation Gulf Cooperation Council, which includes Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman and Qatar.
Kuwait’s foreign minister said in a statement broadcast on state television that the ruler of Kuwait had spoken with the emir of Qatar and the crown prince of Saudi Arabia. The talks “emphasized that everyone was interested in reunification” and would meet in Al-Ula to sign a statement that promises to “usher in a bright page of brotherly relations.”
The summit will be “inclusive” and will lead states towards “reunification and solidarity to meet the challenges of our region,” Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman said in remarks made by the Saudi state news agency.
The decision to end the Saudi embargo comes just weeks after the president Donald trumpCounselor and son-in-law Jared Kushner visited the kingdom and Qatar in a last push from the administration to secure a diplomatic breakthrough.
It also comes just before President-elect Joe Biden’s inauguration. Saudi Arabia may be looking to give the Trump administration a final diplomatic victory and remove obstacles to building warm ties with the Biden administration, which is expected to take a firmer stance. towards the kingdom.
Normalization with Qatar could give Saudi Arabia time to make compromises with the Biden administration on other issues, such as its war in Yemen and the United States’ possible reunion with Iran, said Samuel Ramani, a non-resident member of the International Gulf Forum.
“Saudi Arabia could frame a partial détente, allowing Qatari civilian planes to fly over Saudi airspace and reduce the escalation of the information war, as evidence of a ‘new thinking’ in Riyadh,” Ramani said before the announcement.
In a recent column for the UAE newspaper The National, Beirut Institute founder Raghida Dergham questioned whether the Gulf states could finalize a strategy on how to tackle the Iran issue, which they would then present to the Biden administration when came to power. January 20.
Deep down, there are concerns that Qatar’s close relations with Turkey and Iran have undermined regional security. Egypt and the United Arab Emirates view Qatari and Turkish support for the Muslim Brotherhood as a security threat and have viewed the group as a terrorist organization. Saudi Arabia and Bahrain are primarily concerned about Qatar’s close ties with regional enemy Iran.
Those latent tensions came to a boil in the summer of 2017, when the four countries announced their staggering blockade of Qatar and cut all diplomatic and transport ties with it. The move frayed social ties, separating families who had married Qataris. He also diplomatically brought Qatar closer to Turkey and Iran, who rushed to help Doha with food and medical supplies that had been in short supply in the early days of the embargo. Patriotic fervor spread through Qatar in support of Sheikh Tamim’s determination.
Gas-rich Qatar was also affected economically by the blockade, and its national airline was forced to take longer and more expensive routes. It was unclear how the lockdown would affect its ability to host the 2022 FIFA World Cup.
The blocking countries made a list of demands on Qatar that included shutting down its flagship news network Al Jazeera and ending the Turkish military presence in Qatar, which is also home to a major US military base. Qatar has roundly rejected the demands and has denied that its support for Islamist groups indicates support for violent extremists.
State-linked media in the United Arab Emirates and Qatar launched violent attacks from one side to the other. Qataris also hinted that the UAE was behind the hack of their state news agency in 2017, while the influential UAE ambassador in Washington saw their emails subsequently hacked and leaked.
In a sign that hostilities continue to simmer, Qatar protested to the UN Security Council last month that Bahrain fighter jets “violated” Qatari airspace in early December. Bahrain responded by calling the accusations “irresponsible and unfounded”. Bahrain also accused the Qatari coast guard of arbitrarily detaining dozens of Bahraini fishing boats, which Qatar said had invaded its territorial waters.
Meanwhile, Ahmed Hafez, a spokesman for Egypt’s Foreign Ministry, said last week that Cairo supports efforts to reach a resolution that respects “non-interference in internal affairs” in an apparent reference to Qatar’s support for the Muslim Brothers. The conflict in Libya is also a contentious topic, with Egypt and the United Arab Emirates supporting militias fighting a Tripoli-based bloc backed by Turkey and Qatar.
