BRUSSELS, January 11. /TASS/. Some European intelligence officials believe that Qatar could be aware that Hamas was plotting to attack Israel on October 7 last year, even though they don’t have any hard evidence, Politico reported.

"We’re still looking into it," a senior intelligence official of a major European nation said, adding that though there was "smoke," there was no smoking gun.

The reason why Qatar would have kept that knowledge to itself if it found out about the attack in advance, according to the intelligence officials, was its interest in derailing talks between Israel and Saudi Arabia over normalizing relations.

An agreement between the two largest economies in the region could have paved the way to their cooperation in the area of energy, undermining Qatar’s own prospects, intelligence officials told the newspaper.

"Any refitting for the balance of power is going to undermine Qatar’s position as the top diplomatic player that can do everything," one of the officials said.

The emirate easily agreed to act as an intermediary for hostage negotiations between Hamas and Israel. That happened after Qatar spent decades to build relations with both Hamas and Israel, making them dependent on the partnership, the newspaper said. As one reason Qatar could be aware about the attacks, intelligence officials name the close monitoring that the country’s security agency have over "every move" of the Hamas leaders who live in the country, including Ismail Haniyeh, the head of the group’s political bureau.

"The Qataris may have an interest in long negotiations because it highlights the positive role they are playing," one of the intelligence officials said about the country’s role in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. "It’s very clear to them that almost no one will criticize their role as long as they are being considered a positive player in terms of the hostages."

In November, Hamas and Israel reached an agreement that was brokered by Egypt and Qatar and established a humanitarian truce, which helped release several groups of children, teenagers and women who were held in Gaza in exchange for the release of teenagers and women from Israeli prisons. The pause lasted from November 24 to December 1, ending when the Israeli military announced that Hamas had violated the truce by shelling Israeli territory. In response, the military resumed fighting in Gaza. Palestine blamed the US for the resumption of fighting.