IDF Chief of Staff Aviv Kochavi met the Chief of Staff of the Qatari military during his visit to Bahrain this week, Channel 13 News reported on Friday, citing the Saudi newspaper Elaph.
According to the report, the Qatari chief of staff arrived at the US Fifth Fleet headquarters in Bahrain, where he met with Kochavi. The two discussed cooperation in the war against the threat of Iranian UAVs, and Kochavi even proposed placing Israeli radars to warn against UAVs on Qatari soil.
Qatar and Israel have no formal diplomatic relations and its Foreign Minister, Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al Thani, last month ruled out the prospect of his country normalizing relations with Israel "in the absence of a real commitment to a two-state solution."
Qatar has in recent years had an ongoing engagement with Israel over aid to Gaza. Qatar has provided hundreds of millions of dollars in recent years to pay for electricity in the Strip, build new roads and hospitals, help Hamas cover the salaries of its civil servants and provide monthly stipends to poor families.
Israel has approved the transfer of the Qatari money and has come under fire for doing so as Hamas continues to regularly fire rockets at Israeli towns in the south.
The Qatari envoy to Gaza, Mohammad Al-Emadi, acknowledged in an interview a few years ago that cooperation with Israel is needed in order to improve the situation in Gaza.
During Kochavi’s visit to Bahrain, he met with the Secretary-General of the Supreme Defense Council and National Security Advisor, the Commander-in-Chief of the Bahrain Defense Force and the Chief of Staff of the Bahrain Defense Force, and other senior Bahraini officials.
(Israel National News' North American desk is keeping you updated until the start of Shabbat in New York. The time posted automatically on all Israel National News articles, however, is Israeli time.)