AG asks High Court to block cabinet vote on her firing: ‘Doing immediate damage to the rule of law in Israel’

Attorney General Gali Baharav-Miara requests that the High Court of Justice block the cabinet from voting on firing her, arguing that the dismissal process has been fundamentally flawed and that allowing it to proceed is “doing immediate damage to the rule of law in Israel.”

On Friday, Judge Noam Sohlberg ruled that any decision to fire Baharav-Miara would not take effect immediately in order to allow time for judicial review of the issue.

The attorney general argues that the court should intervene regarding what she describes as the unlawful nature of the new dismissal process, regardless of its ruling that implementation of any vote to fire her should be delayed.

“The situation in which for five weeks the government has been advancing, step by step, a manifestly unlawful process for firing the attorney general is leading to ever-growing institutional damage to the Attorney General’s Office and the entire civil service,” argues the attorney general.

“The very fact of the advancement of an unlawful process, as far as a debate in cabinet on the basis of a tainted decision, even if at the end the process and its results will be invalidated, gives weight to arguments for the legitimacy of the process,” she continues.

Baharav-Miara requests that the case be reviewed by the court as soon as possible, “and in parallel not to allow the government to continue to advance an unlawful process to a debate in cabinet, before the court has issued a ruling on the fundamental question of the legality of changing the principles for firing the attorney general.”

In March, the government set in motion the process of firing the attorney general through the recommendation of the public, professional committee used to appoint her in 2022, under the terms of a cabinet resolution from 2000.

But in June, after failing to staff that committee, the cabinet passed a resolution establishing a new five-member ministerial committee that could make the recommendation instead.

The committee was chaired by Diaspora Affairs Minister Amihai Chikli, and also includes Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir, Science and Technology Minister Gila Gamliel, and Religious Services Minister Michael Malkieli.