High Court petitioned to force government to work with AG pending ruling on removal

Liberal government watchdog groups have filed urgent petitions to the High Court of Justice against the government’s decision to fire Attorney General Gali Baharav-Miara.

In one motion, the Movement for Quality Government requests that the court issue injunctions barring the government from beginning the appointment process for a new attorney general, and instruct the court to cooperate with Baharav-Miara until the court has issued a final ruling on the petitions against her dismissal.

Judge Noam Sohlberg has already ruled that the dismissal will not take effect until the court has ruled on the petitions, although the government is expected to now boycott Baharav-Miara.

“This illegal move constitutes an unprecedented attack on the independence of the Attorney General’s Office and on the system of checks and balances of Israeli democracy,” says Eliad Shraga, the head of the Movement for Quality Government in Israel.

The organization says its requests for interim orders regarding the appointment of a new attorney general and cooperating with Baharav-Miara are designed to prevent the government from “establishing irreversible facts on the ground,” and asserts that “the government is in effect firing the head prosecutor in Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s criminal trial.”

The Movement for Quality Government also points out that there are several other cabinet ministers who are also currently under criminal investigation, investigations which Baharav-Miara had to personally authorize as head of the prosecution service.

The Israel Democracy Guard organization, which also filed petitions against Baharav-Miara’s dismissal, files a request to the court to detail specifically to the government what it is forbidden from doing under Sohlberg’s earlier ruling.

“The illegal process of removing Gali Baharav-Miara from the position of attorney general joins the illegality of changing the rules of dismissal on the fly, two months ago,” says the organization in reference to the government’s decision to change the dismissal advisory committee from a public, professional panel to a ministerial one after it failed to staff the original committee.