Will Qatari Gold Sink Netanyahu

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Can an Israeli prime minister dismiss the country’s internal security chief? The Israeli Supreme Court considered that question on April 8, when it placed a pause on Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s firing of Ronen Bar, the head of Shin Bet since October 2021. Seemingly expecting a different verdict, however, Netanyahu had announced beforehand that he would ignore any adverse ruling.
Typically, such flagrant disregard for the judiciary, whose authority Netanyahu seems determined to undermine, would have triggered a constitutional crisis.
It still could, since the court has frozen Bar’s dismissal only until April 20, demanding that the government strike a compromise with the country’s independent attorney-general, who has opposed Bar’s dismissal on grounds that Netanyahu has a conflict of interest.
The situation is complicated, though, because Shin Bet’s disastrous failure to anticipate Hamas’s attack on Oct 7, 2023, is certainly reason enough to fire Bar. He has even admitted as much, but has also called for a state commission of inquiry into the matter.
Netanyahu, keen not to be implicated in the failure himself, adamantly opposes this. Moreover, Bar alleges that Netanyahu, facing criminal prosecution for corruption, fraud, and abuse of power, tried to pressure him into convincing the court to delay the date of his testimony in the trial.
So, while there are valid reasons for Netanyahu to “lose trust” in Bar, there are also valid reasons to suspect a conflict of interest. And here, the most damning and contentious issue of all is Bar’s investigation of “Qatargate” – a complicated case of bribery and leaks involving Netanyahu’s closest aides.
Notably, Netanyahu decided to fire Bar immediately after this investigation began.
To summarise the case, two of Netanyahu’s personal aides, Yonatan Urich and Eli Feldstein, were arrested on suspicion of accepting bribes from Qatar in return for leaking statements to Israeli media tailored to burnish the sheikhdom’s image.
A third aide, who has conveniently departed to Serbia, is wanted for questioning; the editor-in-chief of the Jerusalem Post is suspected of having been the go-between; and a businessman has admitted to transferring funds to Feldstein from a known Qatari lobbyist in the US.
Leaks from the prime minister’s office are often believed to come from Netanyahu himself, since he is known to have leaked classified information that was damaging to political opponents in the past. Though nothing suggests that he was personally aware of “Qatargate,” he admits that some leaks made by Urich reflected his instructions.
Qatar allegedly paid the leakers to present the country as a trustworthy partner in the on-and-off indirect negotiations over the fate of the Israeli hostages in Gaza.
Qatar has been known to use bribes to advance its interests elsewhere – as became apparent in the 2022 arrests of European Parliament members who were accused of taking Qatari money for this purpose. But in Israel, Qatari money has different associations.
From 2018, and with the explicit approval of Netanyahu’s government, the Qatari government transferred US$30 million per month to prop up the Hamas regime in Gaza.
The money, transported in suitcases to avoid possible US anti-terror sanctions, was used to pay the salaries of civil servants and welfare benefits, thus freeing up other Hamas funds for terrorism.
Qatar’s support for Islamists has often made it a pariah in the Arab world. Netanyahu’s own rationale for allowing the payments was that Hamas’s regime supposedly served Israel’s interest.
With terrorists in charge of Gaza and corrupt, incompetent Fatah bureaucrats in charge in Ramallah, Israel had a convenient excuse to avoid negotiations on the Palestinian issue. All this would have been exposed by Bar’s proposed state commission of inquiry.
Lawyers for the suspects have not responded directly to the allegations, but they stress that Qatar is not an “enemy state,” implying that no treason was involved. They also point out that under Israeli law, only civil servants can be bribed. Strictly speaking, the prime minister’s aides do not qualify. The defense also might add that Israeli media, which gullibly published the leaks, bear as much responsibility as anybody else.
But given Israel’s back-stabbing political culture, leaks come with the territory. Journalists necessarily thrive on them, and so do politicians. Feldstein was arrested last year over his participation in another leak scandal, but did not lose his job.
The battle lines are drawn. According to justice minister Yariv Levin, the Netanyahu government is defending “millions whose rights are being trampled on and whose democratic choice they made at the ballot box is being taken from them by a handful of arrogant and detached judges”.
Yet polls show that 63% of Israelis fear for the future of the country’s democracy, and that they trust the Supreme Court, the attorney-general, and Shin Bet more than the Netanyahu government by a two-to-one margin. - FMT
Konstanty Gebert is a Polish journalist and former anti-Communist activist.
The views expressed are those of the writer and do not necessarily reflect those of MMKtT.

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