In mid-August, 2026, Channel 12 News reported that Israel had barred all defense deals with Qatar, including both future transactions and existing active contracts. Channel 12 said the decision followed defense establishment assessments characterizing Qatar as “a bad actor operating against the State of Israel.”
Israeli defense companies have reportedly sold Qatar hundreds of millions of dollars’ worth of night-vision equipment, air-defense systems, and advanced cyber systems in recent years, with the approval of the prime minister and the Defense Export Controls Agency (DECA) at the Ministry of Defense. According to multiple reports, Elbit was involved in contracts exceeding $100 million, while Rafael, according to a June 2025 report, had Qatari contracts worth tens of millions of dollars. Israel Aerospace Industries, meanwhile, was said to have maintained what was described as a “long affair” with Qatar, in which IAI’s CEO made at least 20 visits to Doha, while a senior Qatari delegation was hosted for a full day of extensive briefings at the company’s headquarters in Israel.
Photographs published by the Haaretz daily also pointed to the installation of Israeli airborne systems on Qatari aircraft. The newspaper identified Israeli equipment on three aircraft used by Qatar’s senior leadership, including systems designed to protect the Emir of Qatar on an aircraft he used to fly to Tehran. Haaretz reported that the systems were installed at various points between 2020 and 2022 during maintenance in Basel. The paper claimed that the systems, mounted on the underside of the aircraft near the rear, detect the launch of heat-seeking surface-to-air missiles and emit an infrared beam that prevents missiles from locking on to their target. The system is said to be particularly effective against shoulder-launched missiles. Qatar was also reported to have ordered Elbit’s TARGO-II helmet-mounted display and target-acquisition system.
The contacts were reportedly ended by Israel after the October 7 massacre, while some contracts that had already been signed were cancelled. Yet defense ties did not disappear altogether: during the war with Iran, reports that defense systems were being transferred to the United Arab Emirates and other Gulf states raised concerns that Qatar, given its participation in regional defense arrangements and its role in the U.S. defense architecture, particularly through CENTCOM’s presence in the country, might also have received similar systems.
Qatari measures to obstruct Israeli defense companies also played a role factor in Israel’s decision to stop defense sales to Doha. In June 2026, Qatar’s sovereign wealth fund was reported to have delayed a joint Volkswagen-Rafael plan to manufacture components for Iron Dome systems at Volkswagen’s Osnabrück plant in Lower Saxony, formerly used to produce the company’s convertibles. Doha has considerable leverage over the German automaker in which the country’s sovereign wealth fund owns a 17 percent stake. The Qataris reportedly justified their objections by citing Doha’s deteriorating relationship with Israel.
Qatar presumably also had little interest in being publicly associated with Israeli defense companies while seeking to preserve its ties with Islamist movements generally and Hamas in particular. Israel was reportedly able to circumvent the Qatari restriction on the expansion of its activity in Germany. Even so, the episode demonstrated Doha’s willingness to use its economic leverage against Israeli interests in the defense sphere.
Another case in Germany, illustrated how ties with Qatar can complicate Israeli economic and defense interests. After months of public discussion, reports in mid-August indicated that the Israeli government was moving to prevent the sale of the shipping company Zim to the German corporation Hapag-Lloyd. Opposition to the transaction came, among others, from the defense establishment—including the Shin Bet, MALMAB (the Director of Security of the Defense Establishment),, and the IDF—as well as the ministries of agriculture, defense, energy, and economy. Their concern stemmed from the fact that sovereign wealth funds belonging to Qatar and Saudi Arabia hold shares in Hapag-Lloyd.
Hostile Israeli public opinion toward Qatar further contributed to opposition to the deal. A Mano Geva poll conducted in August for the Zim workers’ committee found broad resistance among Israel’s Jewish public: 57.1 percent of respondents said they opposed the sale due to Qatari involvement.
The poll underscored the importance of public awareness of the threat posed by Qatar in generating support for Israeli measures against Doha. Many Israelis were surprised that such ties had survived this long. Their continuation appears to have rested on an assumption that defense relationships and economic deals outweighed the damage Qatar was inflicting through less direct means—its media networks and its financing of delegitimization campaigns. The same logic sustained commercial ties in other fields. In early 2025, for example, while the war in Gaza was still ongoing, the heads of the Israel Diamond Exchange traveled to Doha at the invitation of the Qataris to attend an international conference.
As awareness of Qatar’s contribution to Hamas and its role in campaigns against Israel deepened, these relationships drew mounting public criticism, which in turn affected decision-makers. Qatar’s activity at American universities and in international sports added to the concern. So did the serious suspicions surrounding advisers to the prime minister over their ties to Qatar, both before October 7 and, especially, afterward.
The Qatargate affair also intersected directly with the issue of arms sales to Qatar. The business daily TheMarker reported that a company whose partners included a former senior Mossad official questioned in the affair and a retired major general who had served as head of the Civil Administration and as Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories had represented Rafael and Elbit in efforts to market defense products to the Qatari government. The company also conducted discussions with Israel Aerospace Industries over deals in Qatar. According to the report, the absence of formal relations between Israel and Qatar led the former senior officials to use a foreign company they owned to conduct the transactions.
The decision to halt defense exports is important, but it addresses only part of the problem. Preventing the transfer of sensitive Israeli defense knowledge to Qatar requires a much broader effort as Doha has repeatedly worked through foreign companies and former senior defense officials. A Qatari source once explained that Qatar’s approach to arms procurement is not simply to buy the newest product available. It also seeks to acquire the knowledge and technical expertise behind the systems by bringing technical staff to Qatar to install and operate them and training local personnel to use them.
More troubling still is the possibility that Doha has at times served as a conduit for sensitive military information. After Pakistan downed an Indian aircraft during the latest India-Pakistan conflict, reports alleged that Pakistani pilots were familiar with Rafael systems used on Indian Air Force aircraft because of their service in the Qatari military. Similar allegations have surfaced before. Amid tensions between Turkey and Greece, claims arose that Turkish pilots had gained familiarity with Rafael-made systems installed on Greek aircraft through their Qatari counterparts, with whom they share a joint Turkish-Qatari squadron.
Qatar buys enormous quantities of Western weaponry, including from the United States. During President Donald Trump’s visit in May 2025, for example, Qatar purchased Raytheon’s FS-LIDS counter-drone technology in a $1 billion deal, becoming the first country outside the United States to receive the system. Last year, Raytheon, was investigated by the Justice Department over illegal dealings involving Qatar illustrating how Doha’s extensive relationships with U.S. defense companies include not only reciprocal visits to exhibitions and visits by Qatari officials to company facilities, but have, according to reports, crossed legal lines.
Given Qatar’s record and its extensive ties with defense industries abroad, it is reasonable to assume that Doha will exploit whatever openings it can to trade in the technological and defense knowledge it acquires.
Israel remains exposed to a similar threat for as long as defense ties with Qatar survive, even indirectly. Halting defense exports is a welcome first step. It now needs to be followed by measures that restrict, as tightly as possible, the transfer of existing knowledge and expertise and defense ties under the cover of commercial activity.
JISS Policy Papers are published through the generosity of the Greg Rosshandler Family.
