Qatar has pulled out of the Gulf Cooperation Council's effort to negotiate an end to Yemen's political crisis, blaming the country's embattled president for the stalemate.

Qatar was among Gulf nations pushing a deal for President Ali Abdullah Saleh to step down after 32 years in power in exchange for immunity from prosecution. Three months of massive street protests have demanded the autocratic ruler's immediate departure, and a government crackdown has killed about 150 people.

The six nations of the regional alliance known as the Gulf Cooperation Council are worried that Yemen's growing instability could destabilize other parts of the Arabian Peninsula.

Timeline: Conflict in Yemen

Yemen's official news agency said Friday that Saleh's party accused Qatar of siding with the protesters and welcomed its withdrawal from the talks.

Benedict Wilkinson, an associate fellow at the Royal United Services Institute based in Cairo, talked Thursday about what was expected Friday.

Q: So it seems the big question is whether there will be major violence Friday and if so, what that will mean for the Saleh regime and the GCC?

A: I think there is widespread and, increasingly, entrenched anger (particularly in urban areas) at the repeated acts of violence carried out by government forces against its own citizens. The wounding and killing of the protesters is actually fueling the resolve of the protesters rather than diluting it.

Sunni monarchs determined to maintain control after crushing opposition protests in the kingdom of Bahrain may soon face a new threat from increasingly alienated youths in the majority Shiite nation.

On Thursday, Bahrain’s state news agency reported that troops from the Gulf Cooperation Council are expected to stay on even after the country’s state of emergency is lifted June 1.

Sheikh Khalifa Al Khalifa, head of the Bahrain Defense Force, told the state news agency that the forces, known as the Peninsula Shield, were sent to Bahrain after protests erupted in February to defend against foreign threats, including Iran. He said Iranian, Iraqi and western agents helped orchestrate the anti-government protests.

Timeline: Repression in Bahrain

Earlier this week, the GCC, a group of six Persian Gulf nations formed in 1981, invited Jordan and Morocco to join in what some analysts have called a consolidation of power by the “Sunni Kings’ Club” in the face of popular Shiite uprisings in Bahrain, Syria and Yemen.

Salman Shaikh, director of the Brookings Doha Centre, said gulf leaders, led by Saudi Arabia, have become a “club of counterrevolutionaries” trying to reestablish an old order, with some resistance from Qatar and Kuwait, which is home to a sizable Shiite minority.

So far, gulf leaders have achieved an “uneasy calm” in Bahrain, he said, but have been unable to broker a political agreement there or in Yemen that would transform the states into constitutional monarchies.

“If you don’t come to some sort of political agreement, you’re going to have a young generation of Shiite youth who will not forget this and will be radicalized,” Shaikh said. “The danger is that they won’t be listening to anybody except maybe Iran.”

Already, he said gulf leaders may have missed their chance in Bahrain, where the government’s violent suppression of protests and alleged torture of political dissidents and medical staff, reported this week by Al Jazeera, has weakened their ability to negotiate with the opposition.

“A lot of young Bahrianis I talk to now dismiss those people, especially young Shiite Bahrainis, and seem to be moving on,” Shaikh said of the government.

Hamas officials on Saturday denied reports that its top leaders are planning to move from Syria and relocate to Qatar or another Arab country.

“The leadership will remain there," said Hamas spokesman Ismail Radwan. "As far as I know, we were not told to move to any other country.”

The London-based Alhayat newspaper reported Saturday that the Syrian government demanded Hamas leaders, who have been based in Damascus for about a decade, leave. The newspaper said that Qatar had agreed to receive the movement’s politburo leader, Khaled Mashaal.

According to the report, the Syrian decision came out of anger because of Hamas' neutral stance on the current turmoil in Syria.

Arab Gulf states involved in mediating a political crisis in Yemen tightened the screws on the country's embattled leader President Ali Abdullah Saleh this week, announcing that it was their hope that he would step down from power after more than two months of deadly protests. 

Speaking on Thursday, the Qatari prime minister, Sheik Hamad ibn Jassim Jaber al Thani, said members of the six-nation Gulf Cooperation Council "hope to reach a deal with the Yemeni president to step down," according to the official Qatari news agency QNA.  

Details of the deal the GGC is hoping for were not immediately clear, but some reports say the plan entails having Saleh, who has ruled Yemen for the last 32 years, hand over power to an interim council consisting of political and tribal leaders. 

Over the weekend, the Yemeni opposition suggested Saleh let Vice President Abdrabuh Mansur Hadi take over to lead a caretaker government. 

The announcement from the GCC comes a couple of days after foreign ministers of the council reportedly agreed over the weekend to contact both the Yemeni government and the opposition "with ideas to overcome the current situation."

President Saleh in turn warmly welcomed the GCC initiative to mediate in the country's political turmoil, affirming in a statement carried on Yemen's official news agency Saba on Wednesday "the necessity of a serious and fruitful dialogue to overcome the current crisis."

It remains to see what his reaction will be to the Qatari prime minister's statement.

Meanwhile, a Yemeni opposition leader told Agence France-Presse on Thursday that any efforts to get Saleh out of office were "naturally welcome."

Some media reports also say the Yemeni government and the opposition have been invited for talks in the Saudi capital of Riyadh but that no date has been made public yet.

Thani's statement, however, could be a good indicator that the Gulf Arab states, which previously have backed Saleh, have decided that it's time for him to go.

Yemeni medics and witnesses say around 125 people have been killed in the country's clampdowns on protesters. Anti-government demonstrators started launching protests across the country in January.

-- Alexandra Sandels in Beirut

Photo: Qatari Prime Minister Sheik Hamad ibn Jassim Jaber al Thani, right, and United Arab Emirates Foreign Minister Sheik Abdullah ibn Zayed al Nuhayyan. Credit: Reuters

Arab League head Amr Moussa has qualified comments he made criticizing the reported civilian toll from Western airstrikes in Libya, telling reporters in Cairo on Monday that the Arab League and the U.N. Security Council are "united" on the need to protect civilians.

"[The Arab League] respects the U.N. Security Council resolution, and there is no contradiction," Moussa said.

"We will continue working to protect civilians, and we will ask everybody to take this into consideration in any military operation," he added."We have received assurances that these issues, especially the protection of civilians, will remain a unanimous goal for the U.N. and the Arab League."

A coalition force including France, Britain and the U.S. continued strikes against Libyan military targets on Sunday night and Monday morning, demolishing a building in a compound belonging to Libyan leader Moammar Kadafi. Coalition military officials claim the building was a military command center.

The Palestinian Authority has mobilized its forces, hidden and otherwise, to head off serious fallout from the publication of secret negotiation documents leaked to Qatar's Al Jazeera. The satellite TV station has been broadcasting rigorous coverage and analysis of the leaked documents.

The intensity of the coverage by the widely watched Al Jazeera and claims that the documents show the Palestinian Authority made serious concessions to Israel -- on issues including Jerusalem and refugees --  and had collaborated with Israel to get rid of Palestinian fighters even by killing them have seriously alarmed Palestinian officials as high up as the president.

The Palestinian Authority was caught off-guard by the Al Jazeera revelations but quickly rebounded from the initial shock and went on the offensive, accusing Al Jazeera -- as well as the emir of Qatar -- of plotting to undermine the Palestinian struggle for independence.

For the Arab world, working against the Palestinian struggle is taboo, and targeting the movement's leaders at what is considered a critical time in the fight for independence is also taboo.

The Palestinian public in general is divided over what Al Jazeera has revealed. Although the majority of Palestinians respect the TV station and its coverage of their cause, many say it has exaggerated its coverage of the documents, known as the Palestine Papers.

Discussions back and forth on the social networks show Palestinians divided between supporters of Al Jazeera and supporters of the Palestinian Authority.

“This is not the time to have internal fighting,” said Ahmad Saleem, a university student majoring in business who came to Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas’ headquarters in Ramallah on Tuesday, along with thousands of other people, to show support for Abbas following the Al Jazeera reports.

“Our leadership made mistakes," he said, "but we can see it did not compromise on anything; otherwise, why isn’t there an agreement signed with Israel yet?”

Saleem believes Al Jazeera did not report on the documents in an objective way.

He said he did not see of himself as a strong supporter of Abbas but that Al Jazeera had made it a personal issue with Abbas and Palestinians in general. Therefore, he said, he decided to join the thousands who had come to show support for the Palestinian leader.

-- Maher Abukhater in Ramallah, West Bank

Activists in Yemen, Jordan, Algeria and even Albania  took to the streets this weekend demanding democratic reforms in their countries.  

Some expressed explicit support for the Tunisian people, calling for similar uprisings in their own countries. Others were more reserved. Jordanians directed their anger at the prime minister rather than trying to oust the royal family.

The popular demonstrations drew comparisons to the Tunisian protest movement that has captivated the world. But opinions remain divided on whether these events constitute a real threat to the ruling powers in those countries.

"The regime will always look strong until the day it collapses," Nadim Shehadi, from the London-based think tank Chatham House, told Babylon & Beyond. "It cannot look weak, because the minute it looks weak it is dead already."

Good news for a tense region, if you believe in psychic predictions, that is.

Michel Hayek, the Arab world's most celebrated clairvoyant, foresees a Middle Eastern "war for peace" in 2011, assuring the audience that tuned in for his annual televised New Year's Eve predictions that calm will prevail despite threats of war.

"The region is moving slowly toward peace, despite indications of threats and war," the Lebanese soothsayer predicted (Arabic link). "Lebanon, specifically, will be negotiating" on its own behalf, he said, "rather than being negotiated over."

Although Hayek did not speak at length about the United States or U.S. policy in the region as he has in the past, he did predict that Secretary of State Hillary Clinton would suffer an on-camera breakdown.

One of his more tragic predictions already seems to have come true.

On Jan. 1, just hours after Hayek predicted a "darkness" would fall over some leaders of the Coptic church in Egypt, at least 21 Coptic worshippers were killed and dozens more injured in a bomb attack on a church in the Egyptian coastal city of Alexandria.

Arabian peninsula states have adopted a conciliatory tone on Iran a little over a week after U.S. diplomatic cables released by the watchdog site WikiLeaks appeared to show serious anxiety among Arab leaders over Tehran's growing power, and even enthusiasm in some corners (and at certain points) for a military attack on its controversial nuclear program.

Gulf Cooperation Council Secretary-General Abdul Rahman Atiyyah stopped short of an outright repudiation, but he described the content of the leaked cables as "guesses or analyses that can hit or miss" and that "generated misunderstandings," according to the Abu Dhabi-based National newspaper.

The council wrapped up a two-day summit in Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates, on Tuesday, gently calling on Iran to cooperate with the international community over its nuclear program in order to end sanctions against Tehran. The closing statement also reiterated Arab support for Iran's right to a peaceful nuclear program.

Well, this is awkward.

Many of the same Arab governments that called for an investigation into U.S. war crimes based on the WikiLeaks Iraq war log continue to ignore revelations in the latest trove of leaked documents that show Arab leaders pushed the United States to use military force against Iran.

Headlines in the heavily state-controlled Saudi media were dominated by news of King Abdullah's ongoing physiotherapy, while the top story in the Emirati newspaper, Al Bayan, centered on Prince Mohamad bin Rashid's praise for the country's progress toward "transparency." Most mentions of the WikiLeaks documents in official Arabic news outlets were scrubbed of any reference to the countries of the Arabian Peninsula, focusing instead on U.S. attempts to control the damage to its diplomatic relations.

Even the Qatar-based Al Jazeera, considered one of the most credible pan-Arab news outlets, tread lightly in its coverage and generally refrained from repeating the most incendiary quotes from the heads of neighboring states.

You can't buy them off.

That was the reigning sentiment at a recent round of the Doha Debates when audience members voted overwhelmingly in favor of democratic reform before economic liberalization.

While the vote was by no means a conclusive or scientific poll, it did offer a clear rejection of the philosophy of the region's so-called moderate Arab states, where economic incentives are offered in place of meaningful political reform.

According to a poll, 63% of the audience voted against a measure proposing that the freedom to make money was more important than democratization.

The debate over whether Arabs are ready for democracy has been ongoing for many years, with increased urgency after Islamist groups like the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt and Hamas in Palestine made gains in the elections there in 2005 and 2006. Since then, the United States has toned down its pro-democracy rhetoric in favor of stability and economic opportunity, a position that was soundly rejected at this week's debate.

There's more to Arab art than ancient swirling calligraphy and seductive, kohl-lined eyes.

Mathaf, the Arab Museum of Modern Art, which will open in Doha, Qatar on Dec. 30., aspires to highlight and share contemporary art by Arabs and artists living in the Middle East that might challenge some preconceptions. 

It will also serve as a research center, an exciting prospect for the regional arts community.

The project is being carried out under the auspices of Qatari royal Sheik Hassan bin Mohammad bin Ali al Thani, who is also vice president of the Qatar Museum Authority.

Mathaf, which simply means "museum" in Arabic, will be housed in a school that has been converted by the French architect Jean-Francois Bodin.

The inaugural exhibition, titled, "Sajjil: A Century of Modern Art," will include works culled from Mathaf's permanent collection of over 6,000 pieces, all of which were donated from Sheik Hassan's private collection.

"We are not trying to present some sort of new canon," Wassan al-Khudairi, acting director and chief curator of Mathaf, told Babylon & Beyond. "This is why we stress multiple modernities and multiple narratives."