“I've looked at the potential in Judea and Samaria, and even now, there's lots of collaboration between Israelis and Palestinians that is technologically based,” Barkat said.
Continuing, he said that, “what we have here is an opportunity to expand the new industrial zone. We can multiply by 10 the number of jobs… and business clusters that have hundreds of thousands of technologically rich, labor intensive Israelis and Palestinians working together.
“Technology makes a huge difference, enabling people to work side by side in spite of their differences," Barkat stated. "And this is an opportunity for cyber security co-existence.”
The former Jerusalem mayor also explained how his city put down the 2015-2016 "Knife Intifada."
He asked rhetorically: “How do you promote tech advantages in the face of terrorism challenges? We managed to come up with a solution – and today, Jerusalem is one of the safest cities in the world.”
Elaborating further, he said that, “In NY, there are five murders per 100,000 people, and in Washington, 15. In Jerusalem: less than 1. How did we do it? Joint venture with secret service and police.
“Human intelligence and signal intelligence together prevent almost 100% of attacks – and that is still not enough," the former mayor said. "Many technologies such as drones, face recognition apps and more, provided us with the ability to spot and predict an attack.”
Barkat said that, “we also never stop the [residents'] every-day lives, never cancel events, and prove we will not get terrorized. That's decreasing motivation. And making sure, on the other hand, that the attackers pay a heavy price on the 'sticks' side. "In the past two years, Jerusalem has been one of the fastest growing tourist destinations in the world, as well as one of the fastest growing high-tech hubs in the world,” he said.