Humanitarian exceptionalism and fluctuating solidarity: Gulf States’ aid in Gaza

The 2023 Hamas attack on Israel and the ensuing war in Gaza brought the humanitarian response into the spotlight, alongside the international community’s inability to deal with political obstacles in the humanitarian response. However, humanitarian interventions in the Gaza Strip and their effectiveness have long been debated by scholars and practitioners, even before October 2023, mainly from the perspective of Western donors, with little focus on regional ones. This article develops the concept of Gaza’s ‘humanitarian exceptionalism’, reflecting the unique nature of aid delivery and implementation structures and analyses Qatar and the United Arab Emirates’ foreign aid from 2017 to 2023, demonstrating how the aid policies of these two regional donors are tied to this exceptionalism, despite their opposing approaches. Considering Qatar’s formal relation with Hamas–along with its role as a mediator–and the United Arab Emirates’ efforts towards the normalization process with Israel, this research addresses the following questions: How did these two donors fund and implement aid in Gaza? Which factors have influenced their aid strategies during the period under consideration? These questions guide the analysis towards a deeper understanding of these two Gulf donors’ identities within the complex framework of aid delivery and management in Gaza.