Did Qatari Money Drive Trump’s Push for Gaza Ceasefire?

The notion that President Donald Trump’s recent push toward a ceasefire in Gaza may have been motivated, in large part, by his failed campaign to win a Nobel Peace Prize is well-documented. Less discussed is Trump’s close relationship with Qatar — a Gulf state ally where he, his family, friends, and the U.S. have increasingly significant ties. 

For much of Israel’s war on Gaza, Trump showed little interest in the suffering of Palestinians. Before he was reelected, Trump used the word “Palestinian” as a slur meant to insult then-President Joe Biden on the debate stage. In February, as Palestinians in Gaza had just begun to return to their homes amid a U.S.-brokered ceasefire, Trump called for the removal of all Palestinians from Gaza so that he could redevelop it into a “Middle East Riviera.” After Israel breached the Trump ceasefire in March, Trump put little overt pressure on Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to end his war as the death toll mounted. Trump didn’t object when Israel attacked Syria, Lebanon, Yemen and Iran.

That changed suddenly after Israeli fighter jets launched 10 missiles at a residential building in the Qatari capital of Doha in early September.

The building in Doha housed Hamas political leaders and their families who at the time were engaged in peace talks with the Qataris serving as mediators. While the Hamas officials survived the attack, the strike killed six people, including a Qatari security official, and injured several others, including civilians.

Trump immediately took to Truth Social to say he was “unhappy” with the Israeli operation and denounced the strike on Qatar, which he called a “close Ally of the United States, that is working very hard and bravely taking risks with us to broker Peace.” Suddenly, Trump was facing pressure from his allies in the Middle East.

A U.S. ceasefire proposal followed several weeks later, with Trump strong-arming Netanyahu to accept. “He’s got to be fine with it. He has no choice. With me, you got to be fine,” Trump told Axios. Prior to the press conference announcing his plan, Trump cornered Netanyahu in the Oval Office and pressed him to apologize over the phone to Qatar’s Prime Minister Mohammed bin Abdulrahman bin Jassim Al Thani for the September 9 airstrike. A Qatari official reportedly helped write Netanyahu’s apology, along with the White House, and remained in the Oval Office to ensure the Israeli leader stayed on script, according to Politico. Trump went on to start the press conference by praising the Qatari leader as a “fantastic person” who “wants peace.” 

Qatar has long been a key U.S. ally, but since Trump’s reelection, the Persian Gulf nation has forged an especially close alliance with Trump and his inner circle. Qatar has pumped billions of dollars into U.S. companies over the past year — in many cases enriching companies and business ventures linked to Trump’s family and friends. Meanwhile, it has forged deepening ties with the U.S. military. Whether it was fueled by geopolitics, personal profit, or some mix of the two, Israel’s attack on Qatar appears to have been a spark that spurred Trump into action on Gaza.

“It became quite clear that this really backfired on Israel, that it changed the balance of the debate inside of the administration,” said Trita Parsi, executive vice president at the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, an expert on the region.

Business Deals

A mere 20-minute drive north along the Qatari coast from the Doha residence that Israel bombed is a new $5.5 billion Trump-branded golf course and luxury villa development. In early May, Trump’s son, Eric Trump, executive vice president of the Trump Organization, inked a deal with real estate firm Qatari Diar, backed by Qatar’s sovereign wealth fund to launch the project.

That same month, Trump scored an economic deal between the U.S. and Qatar worth $1.2 trillion. Qatar pledged to buy more than 200 Boeing commercial jets and invest billions in energy and tech projects for the U.S.-based corporations McDermott, Parsons, and Quantinuum. It promised to purchase $1 billion in counter-drone technologies from Raytheon and $2 billion in military drones from General Atomics. And to sweeten the pot, the Qatari government gifted the Trump administration with a luxury Boeing jumbo jet worth $400 million to be used as Trump’s Air Force One, a present that drew accusations of corruption.

During Trump’s first term, financial ties were more evident with other Gulf states, such as Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, often sidelining Qatar due to alleged ties to Islamic militant groups in the region. But Qatar has recently managed to win Trump’s favor after delivering a plethora of financial deals with Trump, his family, and U.S. officials.

In the days following Trump’s reelection, the Qatari government fund, along with the United Arab Emirates, injected $1.5 billion into Affinity Partners, an investment firm controlled by Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner. (Qatar, has in the past, bailed out Kushner from a failed real estate investment in Manhattan.) 

Trump, Kushner, and Trump’s billionaire friend and Middle East envoy Steve Witkoff have wide-ranging investments among Gulf Coast states, including Qatar and the United Arab Emirates. The trio of families reaped a $2 billion cash injection from the UAE into Trump cryptocurrency ventures, including one co-founded by Witkoff. Witkoff’s son Zach brokered and announced the multibillion-dollar deal in May.

Experts on U.S. policy in the region say it’s not hard to understand the impetus for these deals and investments.

“This money is not being given to Jared Kushner because of his business acumen, it is being given to Jared Kushner because people understand that is a pathway to the president of the United States, to get the United States to do things for them,” said Matt Duss, executive vice president at the Center for International Policy and a former foreign policy adviser for Sen. Bernie Sanders.

Though Kushner insists he would have secured the deal even if Trump had not won his reelection campaign, Duss calls such arrangements “blatant corruption.” He and other experts say it’s hard to overstate the role that personal enrichment plays in shaping Trump’s policy choices. Such links between policy and personal profit have drawn accusations of nepotism, conflict of interest, and ethical violations.

“His calculations are always tied to his own personal and family and organizational financial calculation,” said Duss. Countries like Qatar, the UAE, and Saudi Arabia, he said, understand that the easiest way to win favor from the U.S. government is to “give Donald Trump gifts.”

Long-Standing Ties

The U.S. working relationship with Qatar long predates the Trump administration. Qatar hosts the largest U.S. military base in the Middle East — Al Udeid Air Base — and is the headquarters of the U.S. Central Command in the region. The base was built in 1996 but was not known to the public until 2002.

Qatar has also played an increasingly critical role in helping the U.S. broker diplomatic deals. In recent years, Qatar played a role in helping NATO and U.S. arrange the withdrawal from Afghanistan, the Iran–U.S. prisoner swap, and the release of Ukrainian children from Russia. More recently, it has been a key mediator and drafter of ceasefire plans to end the genocide in Gaza.

Qatar was a major broker in the earlier Trump ceasefire in January. Since Israel broke that agreement, Qatar’s other attempts at forging an end to Israel’s war on Gaza fell short, with Trump ignoring a recent Qatari ceasefire plan in August even after it won Hamas’s agreement. But the calculus changed after Israel’s September 9 airstrike. 

Israel’s strike on Doha sent shockwaves through the region. At the United Nations General Assembly in New York last month, a coalition of Arab and Muslim majority states applied pressure on the Trump administration for a ceasefire in Gaza and also sought guarantees the U.S. would not tolerate another Israeli airstrike on its Gulf Coast allies.

The U.S. has long provided an unofficial security blanket over the Gulf states, including Qatar. Parsi of the Quincy Institute said Israel’s attack broke such unwritten rule, which “embarrassed” the U.S. on the global stage, prompting Trump to act.

“The trigger was this massive overreach by the Israelis by attacking Qatar and other U.S. partners in the region,” he said. The White House “decided that they needed to take some sort of initiative — they needed to stop Netanyahu.”

On September 29, Trump issued an executive order, pledging to defend Qatar’s security. While questions remain over how legally binding the order is since such security deals must be approved by Congress, it sent a clear message to Israel: “This is not something Israel can do again,” Parsi said.

Among those who reportedly encouraged Hamas to accept Trump’s ceasefire deal during talks this week in Egypt were Qatari and UAE officials. Qatari Prime Minister Hamad bin Khalifa Al Thani served as one of the main mediators between Hamas and Israel. On the other side, Witkoff and Kushner were the main brokers alongside Israeli officials. Hamas is relying heavily on Arab and Muslim states such as Qatar, along with the U.S., to make sure the pressure remains on Israel to uphold its end of the deal and ensure peace. Trump personally joined negotiations, Axios reported, calling in several times to assure Hamas and its allies that the U.S. would ensure the ceasefire holds up. This week, the Trump administration deployed 200 U.S. troops to Israel to assist with the flow of aid into Gaza and that all parties uphold the agreement.

And Qatari troops will soon be headed to the U.S. On Friday, Qatar struck an unprecedented deal with the U.S., allowing the Qatari air force to build a military facility on U.S. soil. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said a Qatari facility at Idaho’s Mountain Home Air Force Base, will house F-15 fighter jets and Qatari pilots who will receive training alongside U.S. soldiers.

Domestic Opinion

Trump’s shift on Israel’s war may also have been coming from home. Pressure was mounting within his America First constituency, which began to turn against Israel in recent months. Far-right voices started criticizing Israel’s war, including Tucker Carlson and Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., who began referring to Israel’s offensive as “a genocide.” Trump reportedly warned a prominent Jewish donor of the shifting tides among his base toward Israel, according to the Financial Times. In an interview with Sean Hannity on Fox News on Thursday following the announcement that both Hamas and Israel accepted the initial phase of the ceasefire, Trump said he had told Netanyahu in a phone call, “‘Israel cannot fight the world, Bibi. They can’t fight the world.’ And he understands that very well.”

In choosing to unveil his ceasefire plan alongside Netanyahu, Trump gave the Israeli leader a chance to rehabilitate his image to the international community. But it was also a chance for Trump to signal to his base that he had a handle on Israel. 

Trump’s 20-point ceasefire plan, which was heavily edited by Netanyahu before its release, does not bring an end to the Israeli occupation, nor does it guarantee a path toward Palestinian statehood. In fact, within the plan, the Israeli military would maintain strict control of Gaza’s borders, returning the territory to the status quo as an open-air prison. And perhaps most troubling to Palestinians is the reserved right for Israel to resume its genocidal attacks if it decides the Palestinians have violated the agreement. Israel’s long-standing policy has been a push to maximize control over the West Bank and Gaza. 

Also within the plan is a temporary governing structure led by Trump and former U.K. Prime Minister Tony Blair, who has long been accused of war crimes by critics over his involvement in the invasion of Iraq. While Trump had softened on his previous harsh statements about displacing all Palestinians from Gaza to build a Gaza Riviera, the plan’s economic portions envision a panel of developers that would oversee “investment proposals and exciting development ideas” by international groups.

It’s the exact type of business deal that the Trumps, Kushners, and Witkoffs have been making across the Middle East. And maybe that will convince Trump to ensure Israel complies with its end of the deal.

“We have all these players, including Trump, who are now sort of invested into this working, and it sounds funny to say, but we’re hoping that this corruption works in support of this enduring ceasefire,” Duss said, referring to Trump’s business relationships with Gulf nations.

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