“Qatar announces $500 million in support for the reconstruction of Gaza,” Qatari Foreign Minister Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al Thani said in a tweet May 26. A few days earlier, Al Thani had met in the Qatari capital Doha with the political chief of the Palestinian Islamist movement Hamas, Ismail Haniyeh. At the same time, thousands gathered in front of the emirate’s national mosque in solidarity with the Palestinian cause amid Israeli airstrikes on the Gaza Strip.
But in the background of this decadeslong political proximity between Qatar and Palestine lies an intimate history, a family history that reserved Qatari society rarely tells.
