Damascus: Qatar has recently paid the Zionist Organization of America (ZOA) an amount of $100,000 USD in two installments, according to the deal’s intermediary Joseph Allaham, a New York City restaurateur who provided the money to ZOA President Michael Klein.

The money was part of a $1.45 million fund set aside by the Qataris, explained Allaham, aimed at winning Zionist support for Doha in its standoff with the Quartet, which just entered its second year in early June.

The first installment was made on November 2 2017 and the second on January 23 2018.

The story featured prominently in the Israeli press, notably the Haaretz, after Allaham registered with the Justice Department on Friday as an agent of the Qatari Government, saying that he had reported directly to the Emir of Qatar, Tamim Bin Hamad Al Thani.

Klein visited Doha in December, where he met with the Qatari Emir, voicing concern over the country’s relationship with Hamas and Iran.

At the time, when quizzed by journalists, he insisted that he received no financial compensation for his visit, apart from the usual travel expenses, which were settled by the Qatari Government.

He carried 50 pages of demands, which included pulling anti-Israeli books off shelves of the Doha Book Fair and raising the Israeli Flag at a Doha sporting event.

“So far their promises have been kept. These things would not have happened had I not gone to Qatar,” Klein said in March.

“Qatar possesses no manners, values, and principles. It uses its money to serve every vice, so it is not strange for it to pay these people, in order to conspire against Saudi Arabia and the Quartet,” prominent Kuwaiti analyst Fouad Hashem told Gulf News. Qatari relations with Israel are not new, dating back to 1996.

According to the Israeli Central Bureau of Statistics, despite the closure of the bilateral trade office between the two countries, Israeli exports to Qatar amounted to $509,000 in 2012, while imports from Qatar stood at $353,000 in 2013.

The Qatari government financed the construction of Doha Stadium in Israel and said that it won’t object to Israeli participation in the 2020 FIFA World Cup, hosted by Qatar.

In 2008, Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak met with ex-Qatari Prime Minister Abdullah Bin Khalifa Al Thani at the World Economic Forum and that same year, Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni landed in Doha, where she met with then-Emir Hamad Bin Khalifa Al Thani.

“The recent payments to Zionist groups are part of Qatar’s scheme to deepen the divide in the Arab Gulf. Qatar has always bankrolled Zionist think-tanks and organizations in the US, with the aim of further destabilizing the entire Arab World. It comes as no surprise,” Syrian analyst Amer Elias told Gulf News.

Meanwhile, Allaham said that he had also paid $50,000 to Mike Huckabee, the former governor of Arkansas, to visit Qatar, given his strong influence within the Zionist community in the US.

Huckabee visited Doha in January, tweeting about “surprisingly beautiful, modern, and hospitable Qatar,” without mentioning the amount that was paid by its rulers to his Florida-based corporation, Blue Diamond Horizons, on November 23 2017.

Also recipient of Qatari funds, according to the Israeli press, are Alan Dershowitz, a former American Jewish law professor at Harvard University, Malcolm Hoenlein, the long-serving Vice-Chairman of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organisations, Martin Oliner, chairman of the Religious Zionists of America, and of course, Michael Klein.