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Gulf state complains of ‘narrow interests’ of politicians in apparent reaction to US congressman

Qatar’s prime minister has said the Gulf state is re-evaluating its role mediating between Israel and Hamas to secure a ceasefire and the release of hostages held in Gaza, saying Doha’s efforts were being undermined by politicians with “narrow interests”.

Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman al-Thani said he “lamented the political exploitation” of Doha’s diplomacy by some politicians who were “marketing their electoral campaigns through the defamation of Qatar’s role”.

Sheikh Mohammed’s comments late on Wednesday came after US Democratic congressman Steny Hoyer said Hamas was using Qatar to exact greater concessions from Israel, adding that if Doha failed to apply pressure on the Palestinian militant group the “United States must re-evaluate its relationship with Qatar”.

Qatar, along with the US and Egypt, has played a critical role in mediating between Israel and Hamas since the Islamist movement’s October 7 attack on Israel killed about 1,200 people, according to Israeli officials, and triggered the war in Gaza.

In November, Doha helped broker an agreement that led to a week-long pause in the conflict during which more than 100 of about 250 hostages seized in the attack were released. In return Israel freed 240 Palestinian women and children held in its prisons, and allowed more aid into besieged Gaza, where more than 33,000 people have been killed, according to Palestinian officials.

Months of subsequent diplomatic efforts to secure a more extended hostage-prisoner deal to halt the war and secure the release of the remaining captives have struggled due to wide gaps between Israel and Hamas.

This includes Hamas’s demand that any arrangement ends with a permanent ceasefire and the withdrawal of Israeli troops from Gaza, which Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s far-right government rejects.

Egypt, the only country other than Israel to border Gaza, has traditionally played an important role in negotiations between Israel and Hamas, as well as other Palestinian factions.

Since October 7, Cairo has also played a critical role in supporting the delivery of aid into Gaza.

But the war has exacerbated deep economic and social pressures in the Arab state of 100mn people, leading donors and allies, including the IMF, the World Bank, the EU and the United Arab Emirates, to provide a $55bn bailout over the past two months to bolster the economy.

Gas-rich Qatar, one of the US’s most important Arab allies, has a unique position as it has hosted Hamas’s political office since 2012.

Doha’s diplomacy has drawn praise from the Biden administration — which designated it a major non-Nato ally two years ago — as well as other western governments. But its relationship with Hamas has faced scrutiny and criticism from some American conservatives, many with ties to Israel or American Jewish causes, as well as from Israeli politicians, including Netanyahu.

Over the past decade, Qatar has poured hundreds of millions of dollars of aid into Gaza, which Hamas has controlled since 2007, helping pay public servant salaries and supporting poor families.

Qatari officials say the state does not sponsor or fund Hamas, but agreed to host the political office after the US requested it to open a channel with the group more than a decade ago. They added that its aid to the blockaded strip was co-ordinated through UN agencies and Israel with the Israeli government having “complete oversight” over the assistance.

The most recent round of hostage talks broke down, with Israel and the US blaming Hamas for rejecting the latest proposal.

Hopes of securing a breakthrough have been further dashed by the rising tensions between Israel and Iran, after the Islamic republic launched a barrage of more than 300 drones and missiles at the Jewish state over the weekend. Tehran said the attack was in retaliation for a suspected Israeli air strike on its consular building in Damascus, which killed seven Revolutionary Guards.

Sheikh Mohammed said on Wednesday that “negotiations for a ceasefire and the release of prisoners and hostages are at a sensitive and critical stage”, adding that Doha had “been working since day one of the war to stop it and release the hostages”.

He said Qatar was committed to its role “on humanitarian grounds, but noted that there are limitations to this role and the impact it can make”.

Watches have stopped

Wrist rollers and Rolex flippers, your time is up

“Is that the sound of a luxe watch bubble popping?” we asked in January 2023. The answer, it transpires, was yes.

The Fédération de l’industrie Horlogère Suisse has released its export report for March 2024 and . . . hoo, boy. Swiss watch exports by value were down 16.1 per cent year-on-year, with readings firmly negative for all big markets at all price points.

© Jefferies

To be sure, March 2023’s growth was 14 per cent so tough to loop, and the latest month had three fewer days. February sales had been weak, down 3.8 per cent year on year, so there was already widespread acceptance that three years of near-continuous growth had exhausted this hype cycle.

It’s still an abysmal reading though, and nowhere is it more abysmal than in China, where Swiss watch imports have dropped 42 per cent by value year-on-year.

Swiss watch exports to China by value © JPMorgan

Again, there are caveats required. China was in lockdown in early 2022, so its 2023 year-on-year consumer spending comparisons are artificially high and its 2024 comparisons are artificially low. Chinese new year, which can be in January or February, adds another complication to the first-quarter data.

The more telling trend is longer term: Chinese imports for March were down 40 per cent versus 2021 and down 21 per cent versus 2019, when the timing of Chinese new year was more-or-less the same as in 2024.

And it’s not just a mainland property-market-implosion thing. On a three-year view, Hong Kong imports for March were off 18 per cent and Greater China imports were down 40 per cent.

Has tourism’s return moved Chinese sales offshore? It doesn’t look that way. Year-on-year falls elsewhere are less dramatic but no more promising, with the US down 6.5 per cent and Europe down 11 per cent on further deterioration in the key UK and French markets. Exports to Japan — where according to LVMH tourist spending has been booming — lost 3.5 per cent.

A lot of watch industry types have been talking for a while about a squeezed middle. Carefully managed supply means high-end demand won’t drop off a cliff, while at the lower end Swatch hasn’t yet run out of ways to sell Moonswatches. It’s the middle-market wristwear, the kind of brands people buy as graduation presents or to bribe their way up a Rolex dealer’s waitlist, that are in trouble.

The data says something slightly different. Middle market volumes, meaning a wholesale price of 500 SFr to 3000 chf, sunk 42 per cent in March. But volumes above and below that range were down in the high-teens too.

High-end (which mostly means Rolex and its small-volume peers, Patek Philippe, Audemars Piguet and Vacheron Constantin) accounts for about three-quarters of Swiss watch exports by value terms. March was the category’s second consecutive month-on-month decline. That hasn’t happened outside the pandemic since early 2017.

As we’ve written several times already, the luxury-tier downturn coincides with secondary market premiums disappearing. Here, for the sake of variety, is Jefferies’ version of the watch-flipper price tracker.

Dealers searching for bright spots might look longingly at bitcoin’s recent gains, given how newfound crypto wealth has previously helped support Nautilus and Submariner demand. The previous boom has left a glut of second-hand supply, however, so the only real bright spot in the data is a 31 per cent jump in exports to Saudi Arabia.

Saudi is a tiny market for watches in global terms, where monthly readings are all over the place due to a combination of low volumes and stratospheric average-selling-prices. And with Qatar and UAE imports both negative, it’s definitely not a regional trend. Still, it’s something.

For granular detail, Morgan Stanley has put together the full table.

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