Enjoy our new column by the Democratizing Foreign Policy team exposing stealth corruption infecting our system — in plain sight.
A new scandal is embroiling Israel, one that threatens to take down Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. It calls into question the level of foreign influence that may have flowed into the prime minister's office — and Netanyahu is already looking to escalate the war in Gaza as a distraction.
What is Qatargate?
An investigation by Israeli police alleges that several Netanyahu aides — Eli Feldstein and Yonatan Urich — accepted funding from Qatar in order to contact journalists and spread pro-Qatar messages. Police arrested the aides under suspicion of contacting a foreign agent, fraud, money laundering, and bribery, and are reportedly poised to indict them for financial offenses.
Qatar supposedly sent payments through Jay Footlik, a former special assistant to President Clinton. Footlik first registered as a foreign agent of the Embassy of Qatar in 2019 tasked with arranging delegations of U.S. state and local officials to meet with Qatari representatives in Doha. The lucrative contract has earned his firm, ThirdCircle, a steady $40,000 a month. Following the October 7, 2023, Hamas attacks, Footlik helped families of Israeli hostages secure meetings with Qatari officials in order to mediate their release.
The investigation alleges that Footlik sent payments through an Israeli intermediary to Feldstein, then military spokesperson for the prime minister's office. It’s not clear whether Feldstein then distributed the funds to other aides.
The second aide, Yonatan Urich, is higher up in Netanyahu’s inner circle. He served as a spokesperson for Netanyahu’s Likud Party for five years. Then, in 2020 he co-founded Perception, a media consulting firm that has reportedly worked with prominent international leaders (including Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky). Netanyahu even referred to Urich in his memoir as “kind of family.”
The Netanyahu aides are suspected of trying to undermine Egypt’s role as a mediator in Gaza from inside the Israeli prime minister’s office on behalf of Qatar. Qatar and Egypt have been the two most active mediators in the conflict (the two countries proposed a new ceasefire deal on Monday), though the lion’s share of the laurels has gone to Qatar. A Responsible Statecraft analysis of media mentions indicates that since October 7, major English-language Israeli outlets (Jerusalem Post, Haaretz, and the Times of Israel) have mentioned Qatar’s role as a mediator almost three times as often as Egypt’s. Qatar has denied these allegations, insisting that Egypt plays a “pivotal role” in negotiations.
Among the more detailed allegations, Feldstein also reportedly arranged interviews for Jerusalem Post Editor-in-Chief Zvika Klein on several Israeli programs to give positive coverage about a recent trip to Doha. Several journalists have been summoned to give testimony in the investigation, and at least one journalist has said he published a story about Qatar that Feldstein pitched.
In the wake of the scandal, everyone is pointing fingers. Feldstein claims he was unaware the funds originated from Qatar. Likewise, the intermediary passing the funds claims he was unaware that Feldstein worked for Israel at the time.
A Headache for Bibi, Life or Death for Gazans
The whole affair has raised a lot of unanswered questions. The main one on the minds of Israelis is “What did Bibi know?” A poll from the Israel Democracy Institute found that more than half of Israelis think that Netanyahu was aware of the alleged connections between Qatar and his advisers.
Netanyahu, for his part, has labeled the investigation a “political witch hunt.” A spokesperson for his office said that Feldstein was briefing journalists “at his own initiative and not in an official capacity” because he had failed a background check and was no longer receiving a government salary.
Although Netanyahu has not been formally charged in Qatargate, he has tried to get ahead of the curve. In March, Netanyahu tried to fire the head of Israel’s domestic intelligence agency, Shin Bet, and the face of the Qatargate investigation, Ronen Bar. The High Court of Justice froze Bar’s dismissal for the time being, but Bar is expected to resign in May. In an affidavit filed by Bar, he alleged that Netanyahu fired him for political reasons, including Qatargate and Shin Bet’s investigation into the October 7 massacre. In response to the affidavit, Opposition Leader Yair Lapid posted a video statement on social media charging that “Netanyahu attempted to use the Shin Bet to monitor Israeli citizens, dismantle democracy, and bury the Qatargate investigation.”
Netanyahu’s decision to try and nip the Qatar investigation in the bud could prove to be a double-edged sword; by politicizing the Shin Bet, Netanyahu runs the risk of turning former allies against his indefinite war in Gaza. Veterans from Shin Bet, Mossad, and the IDF are now leading a protest movement calling for an end to the war.
Regardless of the internal power struggle playing out in Israel, the fallout from Qatargate is likely to lead Netanyahu to double down on an expanded war in Gaza.
For one, the scandal threatens the fragile mediation process. Although Qatar and Israel do not have formal ties, Qatar’s support of Palestinian self-determination and close ties to Hamas have made it a crucial partner in negotiations for a ceasefire deal. The Qatari government has strongly denied the bribery allegations, asserting that they “serve only the agendas of those who seek to sabotage the mediation efforts and undermine relations between nations.” On the one hand, if the allegations are borne out, and Qatar is found to have bought off several aides in the prime minister’s office to further its role as a mediator, the scandal could fray the Gulf country’s relations with Israel — or at least the Israeli public. But even so, Israel remains hesitant to criticize Qatar for fear of losing a strategic partner in the negotiations. As Jon Hoffman, a Research Fellow at the Cato Institute, explained in an interview with RS, “maintaining dialogue with all parties — whether you like them or not — is best, because it increases your maneuverability.”
But the Qatargate scandal also compounds Netanyahu’s domestic political problems, sparking fears that he could expand the war in Gaza or even strike Iranian nuclear sites to distract public attention. According to Hoffman, Netanyahu has a track record of “continuing the war in order to delay or even avoid his own corruption trials, among other incentives.” Netanyahu is facing three separate indictments, including one that alleges he promised legislation beneficial to an Israeli telecommunications company in exchange for favorable coverage on the company’s news site.
By extending the war, Hoffman argues, Netanyahu seeks to avoid his ongoing corruption cases and an inquiry into the intelligence failures that contributed to the devastation of Hamas’ Oct 7 attack. Indeed, Netanyahu broke the fragile ceasefire on March 18 with airstrikes that killed hundreds of Gazans the very same day he was due to testify in that corruption case and as more details of Qatargate came to light.
Ofer Cassif, a member of the Knesset and an outspoken critic of Israel’s war in Gaza, pondered aloud that “The timing of the renewed massacre in Gaza is no coincidence. Is Qatargate closing in on him?”
We will have to wait and see.
