New lawsuit may finally force Qatar to be held accountable

Originally published by Arab News

For most honest analysts, Qatar’s financial and ideological links to terror groups have always been plainly visible. The many millions that the emirate has spent on public relations, lobbying and other types of political warfare in the US, though, have gone a long way to obscure this fact.

A new lawsuit in a New York court might begin to change these perceptions, and finally force Qatar to be held accountable — not just legally and financially, but in American public opinion as well.

The lawsuit accuses the Qatari state of steering money to designated terror groups Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad through entities it controls, including Qatar Charity, the Masraf Al-Rayan Bank and the Qatar National Bank. The lawsuit has been filed by attorneys representing the families of Taylor Force, the 28-year-old American West Point graduate murdered by Hamas in 2016, as well as others killed in Israel by the Palestinian terror group.

American victims of terror attacks have long tried to force accountability through legal and legislative channels. Initially, this effort focused on ending rewards for terror. In 2017, Congress passed the Taylor Force Act, which would halt American aid to the Palestinian Authority until the PA stopped paying stipends to the families of those who were killed committing terrorist attacks. This new lawsuit focuses on penalizing Qatari state entities that make these acts of terrorism possible through direct funding.