"They started to draw the picture of terrorist on anyone who is different from them."

Old enmity

Qatar blames the start of last year's crisis on what it says was a cyber-attack on its state-run news agency, which published comments purportedly from the ruling emir.

He was quoted as expressing sympathy for Hezbollah militants in Lebanon and Hamas in Gaza, and claiming that Donald Trump might not last long as US president.

However, analysts say the roots of the disagreement go back much further.

"This was an issue that was kept bottled for 20 years but it just came out in the open a year ago," says Ali Shihabi, the Saudi founder of the Washington-based, Arabia Foundation.

He refers to tapes that emerged after the fall of Libyan leader Colonel Muammar Gaddafi in 2011 which appeared to show the Qatari emir's father plotting against Saudi royals when he was ruler.

Mr Shihabi says that Qatar reneged on agreements to stop payments to dissidents in other Arab countries and gave them a platform on Al Jazeera.

"Qatar with 300,000 citizens has taken on the 22 million citizens of Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Bahrain and Egypt, the biggest Arab country by far," Mr Shihabi says.

"It is a little brother and you shouldn't play bigger than you are, because ultimately that backfires and causes problems."

Turning to Iran

For now, Qatar is finding ways around the land blockade.

It opened a new $7bn (£5.2nb) port on the Gulf coast, earlier than previously planned. This is helping to shield its economy from sanctions imposed by its neighbours.

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