Report shows Urich may have pushed PM’s adviser to praise Qatar while getting paid by Doha

A tweet by a senior aide to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu voicing rare Israeli praise for Qatar that was posted weeks after the current war began came minutes after a meeting with Netanyahu and his top adviser, Jonatan Urich, a suspect in the Qatargate case, the Walla news site reports.

The report says that cross-checking the X page of National Security Adviser Tzachi Hanegbi with a timetable of Netanyahu’s meetings — which was recently released to reporters by a court — reveals that Netanyahu, Urich and Hanegbi met in Tel Aviv at 11:45 a.m. on October 25, 2023.

Ten minutes later, at 11:55 a.m., Hanegbi published his post, which grabbed headlines and drew criticism since favorable Israeli mentions of Qatar, which hosts Hamas leaders and is considered hostile to the Jewish state even while mediating Gaza ceasefire talks, were a rare occurrence.

I’m pleased to say that Qatar is becoming an essential party and stakeholder in the facilitation of humanitarian solutions.

Qatar’s diplomatic efforts are crucial at this time.

— Tzachi Hanegbi • צחי הנגבי (@Tzachi_Hanegbi) October 25, 2023

At noon that day, Netanyahu began a different meeting.

While circumstantial, this suggests Urich may have been connected to the decision to publish the post, which could add to the evidence that he was running a pro-Doha campaign within the Prime Minister’s Office while getting paid by Qatari officials.

Walla cites unnamed sources familiar with the Qatargate investigation as saying they don’t know if the issue has been probed, with one source saying such a probe should take place.

It notes that Urich’s participation in what appears to be a policy-setting meeting contradicts the version voiced in court in April by Urich’s lawyer, Amit Hadad, who argued Urich was a private man, cannot be considered a public service employee and therefore had no conflict of interest with his dealings with Qatar.

Urich met with Hanegbi another time that month, on October 17, along with Netanyahu’s military secretary Avi Gil, further indicating Urich took a central part in the PMO’s decision-making in the weeks after Hamas’s October 7 onslaught.

Commenting on the report, Urich’s lawyers Hadad and Noa Milstein say Urich never spoke about Qatar with Hanegbi or any other diplomatic or governmental official, and never lobbied for Qatar in Israel.

The Prime Minister’s Office makes a similar claim, saying Hanegbi tweeted of his own accord and that Netanyahu has criticized Qatar repeatedly during the war.

Hanegbi’s office declines to comment.

Urich, along with Netanyahu’s former spokesman Eli Feldstein, allegedly spearheaded a pro-Qatari public relations campaign to cast the Gulf state in a positive light ahead of the 2022 FIFA World Cup, hosted in Doha, and reportedly continued his PR work for Qatar well after the October 7 attack sparked the ongoing war in Gaza, despite the Gulf nation’s strong ties to the terror group.

Urich, Feldstein and a third adviser to Netanyahu, Yisrael Einhorn, are suspected of multiple offenses tied to their alleged pro-Qatar lobbying, including contact with a foreign agent and a series of corrupt actions involving lobbyists and businessmen, all while working for the prime minister.