TEL AVIV — Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad al-Thani, the ruler of Qatar, has started enlisting the help of Hezbollah fighters from Lebanon to secure his family and his rule, according to a report in Youm7 (“Seventh Day”), an Egyptian newspaper aligned with President Abdel Fattah al-Sissi.
The newspaper cited Qatari opposition sources who claimed that the reason Qatar recently decided to allow the entrance of Lebanese citizens without an entry visa was to legitimize the entry of Hezbollah fighters into the prince’s service, bypassing international restrictions imposed on the terrorist militia.
The newspaper reported that Hezbollah’s fighters are to join Iranian Revolutionary Guard and Turkish forces that are already present in the Qatari capital, Doha.
A member of the Egyptian parliament’s human rights committee, Yusri Asyouti, said that the step indicates “that Tamim has lost his head and started to feel the danger hovering over him and so began to import guards to secure the ruling family in light of the growing opposition to Qatar.”
Hisham Najar, a researcher of Islamic movements, also referred to the import of Hezbollah fighters to Qatar. He told the newspaper, “Qatar is playing with fire. It’s acting as an organization and not as a state.”
Concerning Qatar’s relations with Hezbollah and other extremist organizations in Lebanon, a Saudi news site reported that during 2007, the Qatari charity Id Alt’ani supported and funded the jihadist organization Fatah al-Islam, a Salafist group that fought in the Palestinian refugee camp Nahr Albared. The site also noted that documents showed the charity supported Hezbollah institutions as they led the construction of terrorist infrastructure in southern Lebanon after the last war between Hezbollah and Israel in 2006.
The site said that the Qataris insisted on funneling their aide through Hezbollah and its institutions and not through the Lebanese state as Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and the United Arab Emirates did.
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