QATAR PERSPECTIVE

Doha, July 25, 2026. From Qatar's diplomatic perspective, the military operation launched by Israel in the West Bank after the deadly clashes near the village of Tal, southwest of Nablus, is not an isolated incident of violence, but rather the continuation of an "integrated political project" of colonization, to quote an analysis relayed by Al Jazeera. Four Palestinians and one Israeli settler were killed on Friday when, according to local sources cited by Al Jazeera, 25 to 30 settlers attempted to enter two homes in the village before the Israeli army intervened. A local Fatah official, Essam Saifi, reported that residents had tried to "protect their homes" before shots were fired from both sides.

This flare-up comes just days after a joint statement signed by Qatar, Egypt, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Indonesia, Pakistan, and the United Arab Emirates condemned the incursion of over 4,200 settlers and far-right groups into the Al-Aqsa compound, describing it as an "illegal attempt to modify the historical and legal status quo" of Jerusalem's holy sites. The statement recalls that "Israel has no sovereignty over occupied Jerusalem or its Islamic and Christian holy sites."

On the economic front, Qatar's Ministry of Foreign Affairs welcomed this week the Dutch and Belgian decisions to ban products from Israeli settlements, seeing it as "a crucial step" towards enforcing UN Security Council Resolution 2334, and called on "more countries to follow this example" in order to pressure Israel to stop its colonization policy.

Doha views Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu's order to create new outposts and legalize existing ones as confirmation of this diagnosis: far from being a peripheral issue, colonization is the central driver of a de facto annexation, which, according to a report by the European External Action Service cited in Qatari media, saw 54 new settlements approved by the Israeli government in 2025 alone. For Gulf diplomacy, each new outpost moves further away from the prospect of a viable Palestinian state and raises questions about the credibility of Western powers that continue to invoke the two-state solution without drawing concrete consequences.