From the Liveblog of
Thursday, November 14, 2024
AG calls on PM to weigh firing Ben Gvir over his illegal interventions in police conduct
Jeremy Sharon is The Times of Israel’s legal affairs and settlements reporter
Attorney General Gali Baharav-Miara tells Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that he must reevaluate National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir’s tenure in light of his apparent repeated and ongoing intervention into operational police matters and his politicization of police promotions.
The attorney general points out that when the High Court of Justice rejected petitions against Ben Gvir being made a cabinet minister at the beginning of the current government, it placed considerable weight on his statement that despite his previous criminal convictions, he had changed his ways.
But Baharav-Miara notes that new petitions to the High Court demanding Ben Gvir be forced to step down include a series of examples in which the ultranationalist firebrand has seemingly violated High Court decisions and orders instructing him not to intervene in operational police matters.
“It appears that the minister is using his authority to make appointments and end the tenure of officers in a manner which constitutes illegitimate intervention in the operational running of the police,” writes the attorney general to the prime minister.
She adds that the combination of the misuse of this power and “the illegitimate intervention in the operational activity of the police is harming the possibility of ensuring that the police can act out of a sense of duty to the public and not the political echelon.”
Baharav-Miara cites 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 says that Ben Gvir’s actions 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.”
As such, she says Netanyahu needs to address these issues and ask Ben Gvir to respond to the claims. She adds that the prime minister should then sit down with her to discuss their response to the High Court petitions demanding Ben Gvir be removed from office.
