Senior Qatari diplomat warns that Gaza could end in a ‘no war, no peace’ situation
“We don’t want to reach a situation of no war, no peace,” Majed al-Ansari, adviser to Qatar’s prime minister and spokesperson for the foreign ministry warned.
The situation in Gaza could develop into a “no war, no peace” deal, where Israel keeps its troops inside the strip due to the impossibility of establishing an international security force, a senior Qatari diplomat warned in an interview with The Guardian on Friday.
“There is a need for the international community to go in, assess the damage, start thinking about reconstruction, working on reconstruction, and to formally keep the peace,” Majed al-Ansari, adviser to Qatar’s prime minister and spokesperson for the foreign ministry said. “This is what will significantly shift the whole process from war to the day after.”
According to Ansari, Qatar is hopeful that the UN Security Council will approve a resolution that would “mandate an administration and an international force in Gaza, that we would be able to stabilize the situation.”
“In principle, a lot of the countries in the region and beyond have agreed to be part of this, but in practice that needs a very concrete mandate for the force,” he detailed.
Ansari also addressed the problem of finding the remains of the hostages: “There are a lot of challenges before we are able to dispense with stage one [of the deal]. Including the difficulty of excavating the remains of those [hostages] who were killed and ascertaining their identities, and the violations that result in the death of Palestinians every day at the hands of IDF soldiers.”
Palestinians carry aid supplies in Beit Lahiya, in the northern Gaza Strip, June 16, 2025; illustrative. (credit: REUTERS/DAWOUD ABU ALKAS)
Qatar still critical of Israel’s strike on its soil against Hamas
Another topic that Ansari spoke about was the IDF’s attempt to assassinate senior Hamas leadership in Doha on September 9.
“It was designed to push us out, not only out of these [Gaza] talks, but to push us out as an internationally trusted mediator,” he said. “We were working on more than 10 mediations on the day of the attack.”
“This was not an attack we could brush off and continue doing the work that we were doing,” he said, and detailed that the US had to ensure that no more attacks would happen on Qatari soil for negotiations to resume.
