NEW YORK — Nir Barkat was supposed to be in a different place now.
When the two-term mayor of Jerusalem entered national politics and ran for the Knesset in 2019 with Benjamin Netanyahu’s Likud party, it seemed like a safe bet. The party had governed Israel for a decade and looked poised to win reelection yet again.
Instead, that April, Israel entered into a spiral of four inconclusive elections. Two years later Netanyahu is no longer in power, and Barkat is a backbench lawmaker in the parliamentary opposition.
Barkat has declared that he intends to lead Likud one day and has assembled a large staff, but says he’ll vie for the party leadership only after Netanyahu, 71, retires. No one knows when that will be.
Without a role in Israel’s governing coalition, Barkat spent last week on a self-funded solo trip to the US to lobby elected officials here.
His goal is to convince the US not to reopen a diplomatic consulate to the Palestinians in western Jerusalem that President Donald Trump closed in 2019.
The consulate, which had existed before Israel’s founding more than seven decades ago, was active for all of Barkat’s decade as mayor.
Barkat says that since Trump moved the US Embassy in Israel to Jerusalem, reopening the consulate is unnecessary. He believes it would send a signal that the Palestinians have a claim to the city, which Israel regards as its undivided capital.
“Serving the Palestinians must be done from the Palestinian Authority, not from Jerusalem,” he said in an interview in midtown Manhattan. “We will not allow consulates to open up like mushrooms after rain and de facto divide the city of Jerusalem.”
Barkat says he is speaking for the Israeli consensus, but he isn’t traveling with the approval of Israel’s government, which he says won’t even speak with him. (The Prime Minister’s Office would not comment on that claim.)
Nor is Barkat meeting with any officials in the Biden administration.
He has met with senators and Congress members, including Republicans such as Rep. Kevin McCarthy, the House minority leader and Sen. Lindsey Graham, as well as Democrats such as Reps. Ted Deutch and Jake Auchincloss.
As proof that he speaks for the majority of Israeli society, Barkat commissioned a poll showing that 72% of Israeli voters oppose reopening the consulate.
And while he seeks to convey that position to the US government, it gives him an opportunity to raise his profile in Washington, DC. Barkat may be in the opposition now, but Likud remains the Knesset’s largest party. If he ascends to its leadership, Barkat could have a shot at being prime minister one day.
“It’s my prerogative as part of Israel’s opposition to come and state my claims, which by far represent Israeli public opinion,” he said. “You never [put up] your hands on ideology and things you believe in, and I believe it’s the right thing to do.”
Barkat was elected to the Jerusalem City Council, and then mayor, after making millions in Israel’s tech industry as a founder of the cybersecurity startup CheckPoint.
As mayor for 10 years beginning in 2008, he focused on bringing business and tech to the city while trying to burnish the city’s reputation among Israelis who saw it as unfriendly to young, secular life.
Some improvements brought tangible changes to daily life, especially on the city’s western, largely Jewish side: a light-rail system, a vibrant restaurant scene at the city’s outdoor market, the expansion of its soccer stadium, and a restored 19th-century train station that has become a family-friendly pedestrian eating and shopping area.
Other ventures could be described as gimmicks meant to compete with Tel Aviv, such as an artificial beach (sans water) installed in the middle of the city. It didn’t work out.
Barkat is reminiscent of Michael Bloomberg, the billionaire former mayor of New York City. Like Bloomberg, Barkat touts his bona fides as a competent manager from the business world looking to improve quality of life through improvements to public spaces in the city.
“Michael and I became friends, and we share the same vision of how you bring tools and experience from the modern technology world into government,” he said of Bloomberg.
Like Bloomberg, Barkat switched parties mid-career, from Kadima to Likud. Barkat identifies with Israel’s right — especially in terms of how he views the nation’s relationship with the Palestinians, both in Jerusalem and across Israel and the West Bank.
When Israel reunited Jerusalem in 1967 and later annexed East Jerusalem, it gave Arab Jerusalem-ites residency rights in the city but not automatic citizenship in Israel. The vast majority of Arab Jerusalem-ites have not applied for citizenship.
Barkat hopes for a world in which all Arab Jerusalemites apply for Israeli citizenship, as that would signal their acceptance of Israeli control over the city.
He blames the lack of adequate services in some Arab neighborhoods, particularly those beyond Israel’s security barrier, on the activity of some of their residents, which Barkat says poses a security risk.
“[When] the security is challenged, it’s difficult to bring in services, then there are gaps in quality of service,” he said.
“The residents of Jerusalem must realize that if they want good services, they need to help us help them and decrease tension and decrease violence and they will get better service.”
Barkat opposes the establishment of a Palestinian state.
Instead, Barkat has proposed that Palestinians accept autonomy under Israeli security control, along with a plan to bolster Palestinian economic development.
Palestinian leadership, as well as Palestinians more broadly, have rejected the idea of remaining permanently under Israeli control.
“We must never allow two states because it’s a security threat that we cannot bear,” Barkat said.
“We’ll need a special solution, [as] happens sometimes . . . where they have civil autonomy and we have full security [control].”
Barkat emphasized the importance of bipartisan support for Israel.
“If we talk about the relationship with the US, I think we should, both sides, make strides to decrease the partisan issues, be more considerate of the different interests,” he said.
When it comes to the existential issues facing Israel, including whether and how to address its control of millions of Palestinians, Barkat says he has traveled to the US not just to speak for Likud, but in the name of all Israelis — even if he isn’t their leader.
“We must not go that path,” he said regarding the reopening of the consulate. “This is my real position and I will do everything I can to stop it.”
