After over seven months of war, the last two weeks have seen an uptick in public discourse over the “day after” the war in Gaza.
Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, Minister-without-portfolio Benny Gantz, Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, Yisrael Beytenu chairman Avigdor Liberman, and opposition leader and Yesh Atid chairman Yair Lapid have all spoken publicly about their ideas on what Israel needs to do to score a strategic victory.
Economy Minister Nir Barkat wants to be part of that discussion, and his focus differs from that of the others.
Barkat believes that the first and most important strategic step is to knock Qatar out of the picture.
Qatar has been a central mediator, alongside Egypt, in negotiations between Israel and Hamas over a hostage deal. But according to Barkat, Qatar is an impediment to progressing toward the end of the current war in particular, and the end of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in general. In Barkat’s words, Qatar needs to be “thrown out of the equation.”
“Qatar is part of the Muslim Brotherhood, is infused with Iran, and is the world’s greatest funder of terror,” Barkat says. “They funded ISIS, Taliban, Hamas, and every other Muslim Brotherhood terror cell in the world. They are a wolf in sheepskin.”
Barkat claims that Qatar has invested a trillion dollars in what he calls a “soft war” to tilt world opinion in its favor and against Israel. He says that Qatar has been acting in bad faith in the hostage negotiations and colluding with Hamas to delay a deal.
From hi-tech to politics
Barkat, 64, began his political career as a highly successful businessman, having been part of numerous hi-tech ventures. He is estimated to be one of the wealthiest politicians in the country.
A Jerusalemite, Barkat joined local politics in 2003, running in and losing the municipal election. He served as leader of the municipal opposition until 2008, when he was elected mayor. He won again in 2013 and was again elected mayor of Israel’s largest city until 2018. In 2018, he joined national politics and has served as a Likud MK since. Upon the formation of the current government in December 2022, he was appointed economy minister.
Barkat sees himself as a successor to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, both as leader of Likud and as prime minister. While he refuses to talk about politics, it’s clear that his Qatar policy is a thinly veiled rebuke of Netanyahu’s cooperation with that nation for the past decade, allowing it to send millions of dollars into the Gaza Strip, with little oversight.
He claims that Netanyahu, as well as former prime ministers Naftali Bennett and Lapid, former defense minister and chief of staff Gantz, and former chief of staff and current minister MK Gadi Eisenkot, were all part of the mistaken “concept” that accepted Qatar’s involvement in Palestinian matters.
Barkat and a few other Likud MKs are going to propose a bill in the near future to define Qatar as a “terror-supporting state,” he says – a definition that currently does not exist in Israeli law.
This would be the first step in fighting back in this “soft war.” It would put Qatar’s finances under scrutiny, expose its immense investments in subversive social media influence, and perhaps influence the United States to change its attitude toward Qatar as well. According to Barkat, Qatari money has been fueling the protests against Israel that roiled American campuses in recent months, another example of the destructive nature of its influence.
The pro-peace Gulf states, he notes, such as the United Arab Emirates (UAE), Bahrain, and Saudi Arabia, as well as other Arab states including Jordan and Egypt, need to step in to replace Qatar’s influence on the Palestinians. The influence of these pro-peace states could push the Palestinians towards peace and away from radicalization.
Barkat points out that the UAE, for example, has moderated its education system’s attitude toward Israel, and that this education reform is paramount for Palestinians as well, in order for the youth not to grow up hating Israel.
However, the UAE model goes beyond education and influence.
According to Barkat, its system of “autocratic autonomies” of different tribal groups is most suited as a model for Palestinian governance and for an end to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
His ideas here are based on those of the controversial right-wing scholar of Arab culture and lecturer at Bar-Ilan University, Moti Keidar. Barkat cites Keidar’s argument that the model of governance that works best in the Middle East is tribal-oriented autocracy.
“There are no successful democratic Arab states today,” Barkat says, “and those that are successful are not democracies.”
Barkat says that even before the war, he had promoted the idea of “autonomies” in the West Bank – different cities would be ruled autocratically, each by whatever family or tribe was most dominant.
Two states no longer viable
Per Barkat, Oct. 7 and the ensuing war are proof that the two-state solution is no longer viable, and this strengthens his belief in his plan, which would enable Jewish settlers to continue living alongside these Palestinian autonomies. He believes that his plan was even palatable for hard-Right wingers who opposed Palestinian statehood, as it was based on the principle of “peace for peace” as opposed to “land for peace.”
A glaring problem with Barkat’s plan, however, is that the Palestinians themselves would likely never accept it, and an attempt to use force to implement it would likely be met with more bloodshed, terrorism, and international isolation – and not an end to the conflict.
Confronted with this problem, Barkat concedes that it could take a long time for it to be acceptable to Palestinians, but he argues that the alternative of Palestinian statehood is unacceptable.
He says this is because the Palestinian Authority’s “pay for slay” policy of monthly payments to incarcerated Palestinian terrorists and other of its policies prove that the PA supports terror and does not accept Israel’s existence. There is no “fundamental difference” between Hamas and Fatah, Barkat says.
His plan is diametrically opposed to the current US administration’s goal of a two-state solution, but he believes that he will be able to garner bipartisan support. Barkat says that he has been promoting the idea for four years, including with Democratic senators. American congressmen who are Right-of-center have endorsed the idea.
“I’ve been telling them, ‘Look, if you bang your head against the wall, it’s not going to help because huge amounts of the Israeli public will never accept a two-state solution,’” Barkat states.
“When the US wants to impose the US model in the Middle East and it always fails... you don’t impose a model that is not natural to the area, to the people. If you look at our region and what is most successful, it’s autocracies.”
Barkat believes that US President Joe Biden’s recent decision to withhold some munitions from Israel was a mistake. While Biden’s support of Israel is appreciated, the US administration’s attempt to “micromanage the war with the terrorists in Gaza” is not viewed favorably in Israel. But despite that mistake, Barkat says that “we must make major efforts to remain bipartisan,” yet also “be truthful and have our own independent opinions.”
Optimism on the economic front
Barkat is economy minister, and Israel’s economy is taking a hit due to increased war expenditures and decreased income. But on this front, he is optimistic. He believes that like other Middle East conflicts, once the war ends there will be a significant economic rebound. Israel’s potential is huge, and Barkat says he is “100% sure” that there will be a “huge spike.”
“My thinking is how do we get from $165 billion [annual] export to a trillion-dollar export, and it has a lot to do with the infrastructure we are putting in place to help scale our economy... When we get from $55,000 GDP per capita to $200,000 in 15 to 20 years, Israel’s going to be a huge huge success story,” Barkat contends.
He also points out that at the war’s onset, money poured in from Diaspora Jews around the world.
“I think everyone now understands that you cannot separate Judaism from Israel... You see more people around the world deciding to buy into Israel, invest in Israel, or expand their philanthropy, shifting from other places to Israel because they feel the strength of Israel is very meaningful.
“In the Ukraine war, five million fled. Here in October, 70,000 Israelis came in, and all Jews doubled and tripled their investments in Israel, which is something I’m so proud of.”
This is “a huge testament to the strength and the power and the relationship between Israel and the Diaspora Jews, and I think this is something that we should cherish and expand,” he says.
“It’s very clear that if, in the past, Jews were blamed for all the problems of the world, now Israel, the Jewish state, is blamed for all the bad things in the world, but it affects all the Jews.”
Shifting from the strategic to the tactical, Barkat says he is “not happy” with the war cabinet’s management of the war. In particular, he criticizes the delay of an operation in the North to distance Hezbollah, as well as the lack of oversight of humanitarian aid into Gaza. Barkat is not a member of the war cabinet or the larger National Security Cabinet, and he says he does not know the reason for these issues.
However, he says, rather than launching fictitious political moves such as Gantz’s ultimatum to Netanyahu on Saturday night to leave the government, Israel needs to maintain the unity of its largest possible government, Barkat insists.
“It’s better to be wrong united than to be split.”