Opposition party chiefs to petition High Court against PM’s effort to fire Ronen Bar
Lawmakers accuse Netanyahu of targeting Shin Bet chief to stop probe of aides’ Qatar links, while ministers say AG’s demand that the dismissal face legal review is ‘illegitimate’
Opposition Leader Yair Lapid said Monday that he and other heads of opposition parties would petition the High Court of Justice against the government’s attempt to fire Shin Bet director Ronen Bar.
Members of the coalition, meanwhile, welcomed the upcoming cabinet vote, expected Wednesday, on Bar’s dismissal, with Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich calling on the prime minister “not to surrender to violent threats,” including from “legal sources.”
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced on Sunday his intention to dismiss Bar, bringing to a head months of growing disagreements between the two men.
Just a few hours later, Attorney General Gali Baharav-Miara — whom the government is also trying to fire — told Netanyahu that he could not “initiate a dismissal process” of Bar “until the factual and legal basis underlying your decision is fully examined, as well as your authority to address the matter at this time.”
Speaking at the start of his Yesh Atid party’s faction meeting at the Knesset on Monday, Lapid called the effort to fire Bar “rushed” and “illegal,” and said he and other opposition leaders “will petition the High Court of Justice against this firing, with this timing, because its clear goal is to sabotage the serious criminal investigation into state security violations committed in the Prime Minister’s Office.”
The Shin Bet is currently investigating several members of staff in the Prime Minister’s Office for alleged improper ties with Qatar.
Lapid added that “Netanyahu says he has lost trust in the Shin Bet. If loss of trust is a reason for firing, he should be the first to go. A vast majority of Israel’s citizens have lost trust in his government, and have no trust in him.”
Yair Golan, the leader of The Democrats party, said at the start of his own faction meeting: “The State of Israel is under attack — not from an external enemy, but rather from the prime minister, who has declared war on its citizens in order to save himself.”
Golan declared that “the greatest threat to Israel is Netanyahu — Netanyahu is trying to do what Israel’s enemies haven’t managed: to eliminate the Zionist project.”
He claimed that “Netanyahu didn’t fire Ronen Bar because of a lack of professionalism — he fired him because he’s afraid. The reason for the firing is clear: the Qatar investigation, and the desire to cause a comprehensive hostage deal, that would bring about the end of the war, to fail,” Golan asserted.
The move to fire Bar came after Netanyahu recently removed him as head of the Israeli delegation negotiating for the release of hostages taken captive during the Hamas terror group’s October 7, 2023, onslaught.
National Unity chair Benny Gantz, at his faction meeting on Monday, said: “What does a hostage in the tunnels think, when the Shin Bet chief, who was among the leaders of the outline [for a deal] to free the hostages, and who was responsible for the relationship with Egypt, is fired?”
Avigdor Liberman, leader of the hawkish Yisrael Beytenu party, said at his faction meeting: “There is no doubt that the Shin Bet failed, Ronen Bar failed on October 7. But the one who failed more is the prime minister, and the Shin Bet’s failure is above all his failure.”
Later Monday, Liberman warned that Netanyahu could seek to postpone the next general elections, scheduled for October 2026. “In 2026, they’ll tell us, ‘Who says we need elections? we’re in the middle of a war,'” Liberman said on Army Radio, recalling the government’s reasoning for not resigning in the immediate aftermath of the October 7, 2023, Hamas onslaught.
“Because there’s no intention of ending the war, the election date can be postponed,” he says, adding: “It’s not a nightmare I dreamed up at night, it’s a real scenario.”
Smotrich: Efforts to stop Bar’s firing are ‘illegal’
Government ministers and coalition lawmakers, however, praised the move, and Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich urged Netanyahu not to “surrender to violent threats.”
“Any violent and aggressive attempt by legal sources to deprive the government of its authority, vested in it by law, to fire or appoint the head of the Shin Bet is illegitimate, illegal and undemocratic, and must not be obeyed,” the finance minister said at a meeting of his Religious Zionism faction in the Knesset on Monday.
“I ask that we support the prime minister and call on him not to surrender to violent threats, neither from legal sources nor from opposition sources, or an irresponsible protest movement that has forgotten how to be democratic,” he added.
Smotrich on Monday also blamed Bar for the October 7 Hamas onslaught, tweeting: “In what normal country would you even need a special reason to dismiss the head of an intelligence organization who is personally responsible for a terrible intelligence blunder that led to the greatest disaster in the history of the State of Israel?
“Perhaps if Bar had guarded Gaza’s threshold instead of some imaginary political threshold, the October 7 massacre could have been avoided,” he continued.
Addressing the accusations that Netanyahu decided to fire Bar to thwart investigations into the Prime Minister’s Office, Smotrich said Monday: “The Shin Bet isn’t a one-man body. If there’s an investigation, it will continue.”
Smotrich in turn alleged that “the investigation was begun to create immunity for the Shin Bet,” adding that Bar “should have flown away on a missile on October 7.”
“His reaction and clinging to his seat proves he’s not fit to continue serving in his role,” Smotrich said of the security chief, calling his “confrontational behavior” reminiscent of security leaders in the “third world.”
Otzma Yehudit will allow Arrangements Law to pass
Meanwhile, Hebrew media reported Monday that the Otzma Yehudit party, which left the coalition in January in protest of the hostage-ceasefire deal with Hamas, will be absent for the upcoming Knesset vote on the so-called Arrangements Law, dealing with the disbursal of government funds, allowing it to pass, rather than voting against it.
The government’s move to fire Bar was cited as one reason for the decision by party leader Itamar Ben Gvir — former national security minister — to allow the bill to pass in a gesture toward the coalition. Ben Gvir, during his time in the government, repeatedly clashed with Bar and publicly called for his dismissal.
In an interview with Radio Kol Barama, Diaspora Affairs Minister Amichai Chikli declared that the attorney general’s letter to Netanyahu asserting that he cannot fire Bar without a prior legal examination “should be shredded.”
“The government has the authority to dismiss him,” he argued, also alleging that “all of the investigations into the prime minister’s associates are [meant] to deflect criticism of the Shin Bet.”
Speaking with the Ynet news site, Likud MK Moshe Saada said the law gives the prime minister the authority to fire the head of the Shin Bet and that, unlike with the dismissal of an attorney general, no reason is needed.
Saada asserted that Baharav-Miara does not herself know the law.
The Times of Israel Community.