Israeli Press
Nir Barkat calls dismantling the Palestinian Authority his next commitment
Image credit: Nir Barkat — Nizzan Cohen / Wikimedia Commons · License
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Israel's economy minister was asked about a party quarrel and answered with a plan for the West Bank.
Nir Barkat spoke to the Israeli daily Maariv on the eve of Monday's Likud primaries, rejecting reports that he was moving against Benjamin Netanyahu and calling them an attempted political assassination. "There is currently a prime minister and I support him," he said, adding that he respects what the party's institutions decided about the primary.
Then he set out what comes after the election. "The next major issue is dismantling the Palestinian Authority, and I am committed to this," Barkat said, telling the paper he intends to bring Netanyahu proposals for reorganising Palestinian governance around an alternative model.
What the sentence describes#
The Authority he proposes to take apart runs the schools, clinics, courts and municipalities that Palestinians in the occupied West Bank live by, and its payroll reaches tens of thousands of households in every district.
It is also being emptied by Israel's finance ministry. Bezalel Smotrich has withheld the clearance revenues Israel collects on the Authority's behalf, and the Times of Israel reported that the ministry transferred none of that money over a full year.
Barkat's remark therefore restates as policy what Palestinian officials already describe as practice. The foreign minister, Varsen Aghabekian, put it plainly this month: "The Israeli government seeks the collapse of the Palestinian Authority."
Barkat has said versions of this before, and he is one candidate on one list. What the interview adds is the sequence: he places the dismantling of Palestinian self-government not in a manifesto's small print, but first in the queue of business after 27 October.
