When the Qatari emir stepped out of a helicopter and crossed into Gaza last month, the placards bearing his face and the flags draped from buildings marked more than just gratitude for $400 million of investment.
Sheikh Hamad Bin Khalifa Al Thani’s visit to the coastal enclave, the first by a head of state since Hamas’s violent takeover in 2007, was the culmination of a 20-year journey turning Qatar into the world’s richest country and a regional leader from a fragile, debt-ridden Persian Gulf emirate.
“It adds to his prestige as the first Arab leader to go there,” Allen Keiswetter, a scholar at the Washington-based Middle East Institute and retired foreign service officer, said in a telephone interview. “Qataris have an ambitious leadership, they have lots of money and they are quite capable of chewing gum and walking at the same time.”
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