The Palestinian Authority would carry out an October 7 massacre if it had the opportunity, Economy Minister Nir Barkat said Tuesday. “We cannot take any risks,” the minister said.
Barkat was referring to his plan to halt the use of Palestinian workers in Israel since the atrocities of October 7 – workers from Gaza or the West Bank – and replace them with foreign workers.
“The atrocities that we had on October 7 demonstrated to us the risk associated” with hiring these individuals, Barkat said, explaining that some of these workers are known to have gathered intelligence and passed it to Hamas to assist in the massacre.
“We must understand that the Palestinians are training their children to kill Jews,” Barkat said. “That’s the education system, and they pay a million dollars for every Palestinian that kills a Jew.”
Through its “pay-for-slay” program, the PA provides monthly salaries and other benefits to imprisoned terrorists and the families of slain terrorists.
Instead, Barkat said, Israel needs to shift to getting more and more foreign workers by moving the process for hiring them from the government to businesses.
“We must open it up and enable all the business people to find their colleagues across the oceans and bring foreign employees. This is something that has to go quickly. Fast. We have no choice but to make that happen,” the minister stressed.
He said there are some 130,000 foreign workers in Israel today, and the country needs around 170,000 more. He recently met with the economy minister of India, who said that he has about 200 million Indians eager to work in other places around the world. The minister asked Barkat how many Israel would want to hire.
“Many countries are seeing this opportunity,” Barkat said. “We must push the Israeli employees up to technology and higher skilled labor jobs and cover the low-skilled jobs with foreign employees. So, strategically, we have to shift from Palestinians to foreign employees,” Barkat continued. “There’s much, much less risk in it. And, in the long term, this is the right thing to do.”
When asked whether or not such a move would appear like collective punishment of the Palestinian people – some percentage that does not hold these murderous ideologies and has not carried out any attacks against Israel, Barkat said finding jobs for Palestinians is not Israel’s role. He said the Palestinian Authority must create employment opportunities and foster economic growth for its citizens.
“Something happened on October 7. It was the worst day Israel ever had since its inception. So, the idea is that we must do everything we can to stop that slaying, to stop that killing, to stop giving them anything until they change their whole attitude towards Israel and understand that there’s only one way to work with Israelis and that is to have real peace,” Barkat said.
“With all due respect, [the Palestinian economy is] their problem. It’s not our problem.”
Will the Start-Up Nation thrive again?
Does the economy minister believe that the Start-up Nation will survive the war and even thrive again?
“We haven’t lost anything,” Barkat said. “On the contrary, you see a small dip during the wars and rounds of violence in the region. But immediately after that, you see huge, steep growth.”
He said people go to the army and come back with new ideas, and the world is looking at what Israel has to offer.
In May, Barkat announced that Israel would invest up to a billion shekels in a new Economy Ministry program to build industry “clusters” modeled after Harvard professor Michael E. Porter’s economic model.
The program identifies core sectors and helps them to collaborate and develop growth plans, including the potential for public-private investments in companies in these areas. For every $3 invested by the private sector in approved companies, the government would support $1, making investing in Israeli companies “one of the best and low-risk investments you can make,” Barkat had said.
Will this plan – and the goal of penetrating the international market “in a big way” – resume?
“We just had a three-month delay,” Barkat said. “We are regrouping and once again focusing on our competitive advantage to see how we could boost our economy and have our Israeli entrepreneurs go global.”