‘It’s either her or me’: Ben Gvir signals he’ll demand firing of attorney general

Far-right National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir will likely soon issue an ultimatum to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu regarding his ongoing grievances against Attorney General Gali Baharav-Miara, he told Israel National News in an interview published Thursday.

“Time after time I’ve approached the prime minister and told him she has to go. We’re getting close to the moment where I’ll have no choice but to present an ultimatum to Netanyahu: it’s either her, or me. Only one of us can keep our job. She should have gone home a long time ago,” the minister said.

The interview was published the same day Baharav-Miara told Netanyahu he must reevaluate Ben Gvir’s tenure, in light of his repeated and ongoing interventions into operational police matters and his politicization of police promotions.

Ben Gvir termed the move, which had been expected for some time, “an attempted coup,” and called for Baharav-Miara’s firing, as he has done numerous times in the past.

In the interview, Ben Gvir rejected the idea that there is any legal reason to fire him, saying: “You have to fire a minister if an indictment is filed against him, but no such thing exists in my case.”

“They tried to stick things on me, and none of them stuck. They tried to threaten me, and they didn’t succeed. So now she’s trying to invent legal rules that don’t exist, to get rid of me,” Ben Gvir said.

Asked on Thursday why the government has not already fired the attorney general, Ben Gvir said this was his “sore spot,” and that the question should be asked of Netanyahu.

“I’ve been saying for two years now [that she should be fired.] She is constantly working against the government, and she’s indifferent to the fact that the public is also being hurt by her behavior,” he said.

The minister also accused Baharav-Miara of obstructing his efforts to tackle violent crime in the Arab sector, which has surged in recent years, because she has not granted wide enough approval for cell phone tapping.

“Both of the last two police commissioners, both [Kobi] Shabtai and Danny Levy, asked for approval to start wiretapping cellphones. According to their estimates, the moment we give the police permission to use this tool, we can reduce murders in the Arab sector by 30%, in a very short time. That isn’t happening because she won’t allow it to happen, and we see the results,” Ben Gvir said.

In her letter to the prime minister Thursday, the attorney general told Netanyahu that Ben Gvir has on several occasions seemed to violate High Court decisions, as well as orders instructing him not to refrain from intervening in operational police matters.

Baharav-Miara cited numerous acts of intervention by Ben Gvir into police operations, including publicly summoning senior police officials for a dressing down due to his displeasure at their handling of anti-government protests; declaring at a police operations room that he had gone there to ensure the police carried out his directives for handling protests; and a letter by former police commissioner Kobi Shabtai that Ben Gvir had instructed senior police officers to disregard cabinet orders regarding the protection of humanitarian aid convoys on their way to Gaza.

The attorney general said that Ben Gvir’s actions in office reflected a pattern of behavior of “contempt for the law, violation of the law and harm to the foundational principles of governance, and by the politicization of police work.”

Baharav-Miara has been at the forefront of efforts to stop the government from pushing through elements of its judicial overhaul reforms, which she says undermine democracy.