Israeli Attorney General Gali Baharav-Miara said Friday that the prime minister was not allowed to appoint a new internal security agency chief, after the supreme court froze his government’s bid to oust the Shin Bet head.
“According to the decision of the Supreme Court, it is prohibited to take any action that harms the position of the head of the Shin Bet, Ronen Bar,” Baharav-Miara said in a message to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu published by a spokesperson.
“It is prohibited to appoint a new head of Shin Bet, and interviews for the position should not be held,” she added.
But in a post on X, Netanyahu insisted it was up to the government to decide who heads the domestic security agency.
“There will be no civil war! The State of Israel is a state of law, and according to the law, the government of Israel decides who will be the head of the Shin Bet,” he said.
The supreme court had frozen the government’s decision to dismiss Bar, in order to review appeals filed against the dismissal.
It said that the freeze would remain in place until the appeals are presented to the court before April 8.
Opposition parties and a non-governmental organisation filed separate appeals hours after the government announced its decision.
Opposition leader Yair Lapid’s centre-right Yesh Atid party said it had appealed against Bar’s dismissal in the name of several opposition movements.
Yesh Atid denounced what it called “a decision based on flagrant conflict of interest”.
In her message to Netanyahu, Baharav-Miara said a legal review would be completed into the possibility of the prime minister’s involvement in the matter “given the concern of a conflict of interest arising from the Shin Bet’s investigations of his trusted associates”.
In a letter made public on Thursday, Bar said Netanyahu’s arguments against him were “general, unsubstantiated accusations that seem to hide the motivations behind the decision to terminate duties”.
He referred to the “complex, wide-ranging and highly sensitive investigation” involving people close to Netanyahu who allegedly received money from the Gulf state of Qatar, which was a major aid donor to Gaza before Hamas’s October 2023 attack on Israel.
Via AFP