Qatar’s public criticism of the Abraham Accord has been called out by an Israeli politician who worked in Doha to establish ties he said the Gulf state was keen to make, without concessions to improve the lives of the Palestinians.
On Sky News Arabia on Saturday, Yisrael Beiteinu party member Eli Avidar, 54, who ran an Israeli trade mission in Qatar between 1999 and 2001, accused Qatar of double standards and hypocrisy in dealing with Israel and Arab states.
The Egypt-born former diplomat said that at the time, Israel agreed with Qatar to open up relations between the two nations, but the plight of the Palestinian people was never raised.
Doha was only interested in strengthening Qatari-Israeli relations for personal benefit, Mr Avidar said.
He said everyone in the Qatari government denied or were not aware of the existence of the trade office he ran in Doha, but then prime minister Sheikh Hamad bin Jassim flaunted Qatar-Israeli relations abroad.
Mr Avidar said Qatar had asked him to stay at home and not speak publicly during the Organisation of the Islamic Conference summit in Doha in November 2000.
“Qatar lied to all Islamic countries and said that it closed the Israeli office,” he said.
“The funny thing was that when he would meet with ministers abroad and they would call me and say, ‘We met Hamad bin Jassim. He’s a real friend of Israel,’ and would thank him and describe him as a ‘respectable and well-loved man'," Mr Avidar said.
"That was Hamad. He would fool you with his honeyed words. But when I returned to Jerusalem, I would report that Hamad was a problem and not part of the solution.”
While Mr Avidar said Sheikh Hamad was keen to show off his ties with Israel, he criticised the news of the Abraham Accord, establishing ties between the UAE and Israel.
Sheikh Hamad then posted a series of tweets boasting of Qatar's “clandestine” relations with Israel, which long preceded the Abraham Accord.
"Thus, I want to recall recent times when we opened the Israeli trade office and established our relationship with Israel publicly after the Madrid Peace Conference,” he wrote.
Mr Avidar said the agreement between Mauritania and Israel to establish ties in 1999 was heavily criticised in the Qatari press.
“The Qatari media asked, ‘Why are they normalising with the Zionist enemy?’" he said.
"To which I said, ‘My brother, we are normalising with you and we remain in your country with your blessing'."
Mr Avidar said the only time Qatar had any interest in discussing the Palestinians was when Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu came up with a solution to appease Hamas.
The Palestinian militants and rulers of the Gaza Strip receive millions in funding from Doha, after Hamas launched 500 rockets at Israel.
Mr Netanyahu's solution involved asking Qatar to pay for Hamas’ silence.
Mr Avidar said that Qatar then paid a monthly stipend of $15 million under the guise of aid for the Palestinian people, which was to cover the salaries of Hamas members.
“My party will not support normalising relations with Qatar," he said.
"Qatar is part of the problem, it is not part of the solution, and if they continue with the same policy, they will not rest or find peace in their lives."
The former diplomat turned politician said Qatar had close ties with Iran and regarded other Gulf states as the enemy.
“In order to succeed in their mission, any diplomat must ask two questions and have the two answers in hand: who is the enemy of the state and who is the friend of the state?" Mr Avidar said.
"I searched for the answers to those two questions before I got to Doha.
“I sat for two months following the Qatari media, Al Jazeera, the Qatari newspapers, and it became clear to me that their friend is the Islamic Republic of Iran.
"There was no negative word against Iran, not on Al Jazeera or in any place.
"Qatari policy has shown that their friend is Iran and that the enemy is Saudi Arabia, Bahrain and the UAE.”
In 2017, Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Bahrain and Egypt cut ties with Qatar over its meddling in the internal affairs of its neighbours and supporting terror groups.
“I was in Doha from 1999 to 2001. The same problems then are still the same problems now," Mr Avidar said.
"Al Jazeera in the Arab [uprisings] was responsible for the eruption of events in the Arab world; for what happened in Bahrain as well.
“The existing problem for the Gulf, all of the Middle East, is Iran. It is not reasonable that Iran remains a friend to Qatar as it is setting fire to other countries in the Gulf.”
Mercer, the investment consulting arm of US services company Marsh & McLennan, expects its wealth division to at least double its assets under management (AUM) in the Middle East as wealth in the region continues to grow despite economic headwinds, a company official said.
Mercer Wealth, which globally has $160 billion in AUM, plans to boost its AUM in the region to $2-$3bn in the next 2-3 years from the present $1bn, said Yasir AbuShaban, a Dubai-based principal with Mercer Wealth.
“Within the next two to three years, we are looking at reaching $2 to $3 billion as a conservative estimate and we do see an opportunity to do so,” said Mr AbuShaban.
Mercer does not directly make investments, but allocates clients’ money they have discretion to, to professional asset managers. They also provide advice to clients.
“We have buying power. We can negotiate on their (client’s) behalf with asset managers to provide them lower fees than they otherwise would have to get on their own,” he added.
Mercer Wealth’s clients include sovereign wealth funds, family offices, and insurance companies among others.
From its office in Dubai, Mercer also looks after Africa, India and Turkey, where they also see opportunity for growth.
Wealth creation in Middle East and Africa (MEA) grew 8.5 per cent to $8.1 trillion last year from $7.5tn in 2015, higher than last year’s global average of 6 per cent and the second-highest growth in a region after Asia-Pacific which grew 9.9 per cent, according to consultancy Boston Consulting Group (BCG). In the region, where wealth grew just 1.9 per cent in 2015 compared with 2014, a pickup in oil prices has helped in wealth generation.
BCG is forecasting MEA wealth will rise to $12tn by 2021, growing at an annual average of 8 per cent.
Drivers of wealth generation in the region will be split evenly between new wealth creation and growth of performance of existing assets, according to BCG.
Another general trend in the region is clients’ looking for a comprehensive approach to investing, according to Mr AbuShaban.
“Institutional investors or some of the families are seeing a slowdown in the available capital they have to invest and in that sense they are looking at optimizing the way they manage their portfolios and making sure they are not investing haphazardly and different parts of their investment are working together,” said Mr AbuShaban.
Some clients also have a higher appetite for risk, given the low interest-rate environment that does not provide enough yield for some institutional investors. These clients are keen to invest in illiquid assets, such as private equity and infrastructure.
“What we have seen is a desire for higher returns in what has been a low-return environment specifically in various fixed income or bonds,” he said.
“In this environment, we have seen a de facto increase in the risk that clients are taking in things like illiquid investments, private equity investments, infrastructure and private debt, those kind of investments were higher illiquidity results in incrementally higher returns.”
The Abu Dhabi Investment Authority, one of the largest sovereign wealth funds, said in its 2016 report that has gradually increased its exposure in direct private equity and private credit transactions, mainly in Asian markets and especially in China and India. The authority’s private equity department focused on structured equities owing to “their defensive characteristics.”
Gender pay parity on track in the UAE
The UAE has a good record on gender pay parity, according to Mercer's Total Remuneration Study.
"In some of the lower levels of jobs women tend to be paid more than men, primarily because men are employed in blue collar jobs and women tend to be employed in white collar jobs which pay better," said Ted Raffoul, career products leader, Mena at Mercer. "I am yet to see a company in the UAE – particularly when you are looking at a blue chip multinationals or some of the bigger local companies – that actively discriminates when it comes to gender on pay."
Mr Raffoul said most gender issues are actually due to the cultural class, as the population is dominated by Asian and Arab cultures where men are generally expected to work and earn whereas women are meant to start a family.
"For that reason, we see a different gender gap. There are less women in senior roles because women tend to focus less on this but that’s not due to any companies having a policy penalising women for any reasons – it’s a cultural thing," he said.
As a result, Mr Raffoul said many companies in the UAE are coming up with benefit package programmes to help working mothers and the career development of women in general.
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