"How beautiful it is when people put aside what divides them to celebrate their diversity while celebrating what unites them," said a proud Emir Tamin bin Hamad Al Thani as he opened the FIFA World Cup in his country.

The strength of the tournament's ability to unite peoples - which many in the West doubt - will only become clear in the next few weeks.

However, the grandstand gave clear evidence of one thing: the will in the region to overlook the divide.

Christopher Ehrhardt

Correspondent for the Arab countries based in Beirut.

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The Saudi crown prince and de facto ruler Muhammad bin Salman sat very close to the Qatari monarch, separated only by FIFA President Gianni Infantino.

A few years ago that would have been unthinkable.

The crown prince had orchestrated a blockade campaign together with like-minded powers.

The quartet from Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain and Egypt closed borders and airspace, expelled Qatari citizens from the country and recalled their own citizens.

Small but stubborn Qatar should be put in its place for all the world to see.

It was about Doha's support for the Islamist Muslim Brotherhood, which experienced a brief rise after the 2011 Arabellion.

It was also about the refusal of the emirate to go along with the Iran-hostile line of the rulers in Riyadh and Abu Dhabi, and about the broadcaster Al Jazirah, which made life difficult for the rulers of the region, except for those in Qatar.

But Doha did not back down.

The emirate was the points winner when the crisis was settled in early 2021.

Those in power in the Gulf preferred to focus on rebuilding their own economies to make them less dependent on oil and gas revenues.

Tensions remain

And the Egyptian ruler, Abd al-Fattah al-Sisi, had also recognized the advantages that relaxation could mean for his chronically and drastically underfinanced budget.

The visit to the stadium also brought Sisi together with the man who had fully supported the leadership in Doha during the blockade: Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who has sympathy for the political Islam of the Muslim Brotherhood, which Sisi is brutally persecuting in his country.

In Libya, too, representatives of both countries have been at war for years.

But tensions remain.

The Emirates demonstrated their ongoing skepticism towards Qatar in the absence of President Muhammad bin Zayed Al Nahyan, who is also the Emir of Abu Dhabi.

Vice-President, Prime Minister and Emir of Dubai, Muhammad bin Rashid Al Maktoum traveled in his place.

The members of Bahrain's ruling house, the Al Khalifa, stayed away from the opening ceremony.

She and the Qatari royal family Al Thani are deadly enemies.

Despite the World Cup, there are no direct flights between two countries that are less than half an hour away by plane and whose populations are linked by many family ties.

However, the human rights record of the VIP guests is devastating.

Erdogan rules his country with an iron fist.

In Egypt, tens of thousands have disappeared into the regime's dungeons, and torture is the order of the day.

Muhammad bin Salman commands a repressive apparatus that does not shy away from it either.

And not everyone would have liked to sit in public next to a man blamed for the brutal murder of his critic Jammal Khashoggi.

Politicians from leading Western powers hoping for Qatari gas to satisfy Europe's thirst for energy could not be identified in the boxes.