> having funded Hamas for years, hosting the Hamas leaders in their country Qatar did both of those things at the request of the US and Israel. Qatar serves as

> having funded Hamas for years, hosting the Hamas leaders in their country Qatar did both of those things at the request of the US and Israel. Qatar serves as an intermediary between the US/Israel and Hamas, just as it served as an intermediary for talks between the US and the Taliban. > Like many of these seemingly weird decisions, there's more to it than "Israel bad". The motivation here is clearly to stop information about what is happening in Gaza from reaching the outside world. Al Jazeera is the only major international news agency with a significant presence on the ground there.