Deri says Shas will back sacking of attorney general if brought for vote

Shas chairman Aryeh Deri says his party will vote in favor of terminating Attorney General Gali Baharav-Miara should Justice Minister Yariv Levin bring a motion to fire her to the cabinet.

Speaking with party mouthpiece HaDerech, Deri says that Baharav-Miara “harms democracy” and “doesn’t let you work on anything.”

Deri, a convicted felon who did jail time for taking bribes while serving as interior minister three decades ago, was blocked by Baharav-Miara last year when he tried to take cabinet post despite having vowed as part of a plea deal stemming from a newer fraud case to bow out of politics.

Coalition lawmakers gunning for Baharav-Miara have been trying to drum up support for the government to sack her, seeing the attorney general as a major obstacle to its wider efforts to overhaul the judiciary.

Following a meeting of coalition party leaders on Sunday evening, National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir welcomed what he described as “broad agreement on my demand to dismiss the attorney general.”

Despite this, no action was taken and the two ultra-Orthodox parties, Shas and United Torah Judaism, indicated that they would not support any moves related to the government’s judicial overhaul without first seeing progress on legislation that would exempt their constituents from military service.

A follow-up meeting on the issue is scheduled for this evening.

Addressing the Knesset earlier this month, Levin appeared to indicate that there was insufficient support within the cabinet to fire Baharav-Miara and called on ministers who have not yet joined the effort to “come out to the public and tell the truth.”

Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar on Sunday evening warned that while he supports moves that would remove prosecutorial powers from the attorney general’s toolkit, “at this time, great responsibility is required to avoid exacerbating tensions in Israeli society.”