The Arab League meeting on Tuesday witnessed a 30-minute altercation between diplomats from Qatar and the four states boycotting it. Qatar’s Minister of State for Foreign Affairs Sultan bin Saad Al-Muraikhi sparked tension when he started to discuss the boycott in his opening speech despite not being on the agenda. Al-Muraikhi described the siege imposed on Qatar by the boycotting countries as a “full crime” that includes hacking the website of the Qatari news agency, fabricating statements and attributing them to the Emir of Qatar, and media campaigns by “rabid dogs” targeting the Emir. He also discussed the decision of the UAE that bans any form of sympathy with Qatar, threatening sympathizers with jail terms of up to 15 years and an AED 500 thousand fine. Al-Muraikhi said that the list of demands presented by the boycotting countries is impossible to come into effect as it is an explicit violation of the sovereignty of Qatar. He went on to say that the boycotting countries refused to actively interact with the efforts of Doha to settle the dispute and described Iran as an “honorable country”, a description which received a severe backlash later on…
