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The Israeli cabinet voted to remove the head of the Internal Security Agency Shin Bet, in a move that is likely to intensify the position between Benjamin Netanyahu’s government and the country’s legal authorities.
Opposing thousands of protesters outside the Prime Minister’s office in Jerusalem, in the early hours of Friday the cabinet voted unanimously to reject Ronen Bar after Netanyahu said he had lost faith in his internal spy boss.
“Ronen Bar will put an end to his role as the chief of Shin Bet on April 10, 2025 or when a permanent head is appointed Shin Bet – whatever the first,” Netanyahu’s office said in a brief statement.
Tensions between Netanyahu and Bar have been boiled since Hamas’s destructive attack on October 7, 2023 on Israel, which is widely seen as the worst failure of security and intelligence in Israel’s history.
Netanyahu has fought to avoid a public investigation into the events that led to Hamas’ attack, and tried to blame for his security chiefs debut. Herzi Halevi, the army chief, was forced to leave earlier this month.
Like other senior security officials on October 7, Bar, who took office in 2021, has accepted responsibility for the failures that allowed the attack, and had shown his intention to renounce his term.
But he has also accused Netanyahu of failures, issuing a protected statement this week arguing that Netanyahu’s governments had defined politics against Hamas for years before the attack and warnings of Shin Bet.
Tensions between the two men have worsened in recent weeks after Shin Bet pursued an investigation into the lobbying on behalf of Qatar who allegedly carried out by aide to the Prime Minister’s office.
Netanyahu has rejected the investigation as politically motivated. But in a letter to ministers published by Israeli media on Thursday night, Bar warned that his dismissal could now “endanger” the investigation, which he said would be a danger to Israel’s security.
Netanyahu announced his intention to remove the bar on Sunday, causing Israeli Attorney General Gali Baharav-Miara who Netanyahu is also trying to remove the prime minister that he could not do so “until the factual and legal basis underlying your decision and your ability to deal with the matter has been clarified.”
But the government rejected Baharav-Miara’s warning with the Secretary of Government accusing her of “exceeding her authority” in a letter published by Netanyahu’s office on Thursday.
Place on the output of the bar comes between a wider clash between Netanyahu’s right government and Israel’s judicial and legal authorities, which began when the government began a controversial attempt to limit the judiciary’s powers in 2023, and has turned on in recent weeks.
Netanyahu’s justice minister has refused to recognize the authority of the new Chief of the Supreme Court, whose appointment the government had delayed for more than a year in the hope of installing a different appointed. The government is also advancing the legislation created to give it greater control over the appointment of Supreme Court judges.
At the same time, she is trying to remove Baharav-Miara, the country’s highest legal officer, who has repeatedly clashed with the government on issues that start from political appointments to the court.
The plan to dismiss the bar has sparked protests throughout the week, with tens of thousands of people joining rallies in Tel Aviv and Jerusalem on Tuesday and Wednesday, and police collided with demonstrators near Netanyahu’s home during another protest on Thursday.
Aharon Barak, the former head of the Supreme Court, said he feared that the attitude between the government and the legal and judicial institutions of Israel could create a catastrophic division in Israeli society.
“In the end I’m afraid it will be like a train that goes from the trail and sinks into a noise causing a civil war,” he said in an interview with Israeli website Ynet. “We need to prevent the tyranny of the majority.”
