Police and demonstrators clash in Jerusalem on March 19 during a march protesting the resumption of fighting in Gaza and Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu's announced plans to dismiss Shin Bet chief Ronen Bar. (Atef Safadi/EPA-EFE/Shutterstock)
JERUSALEM — As Israeli troops moved Friday to seize additional areas of Gaza in a renewed offensive, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu pressed forward on the home front to oust two senior officials in a move that roiled Israeli politics.
In a late-night Thursday cabinet session, Netanyahu’s ministers voted unanimously to dismiss Ronen Bar, the director of the Shin Bet intelligence service. Hours later, on Friday morning, the government scheduled another discussion for Sunday over firing another Netanyahu critic, Attorney General Gali Baharav-Miara.
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The moves to dismiss two of Netanyahu’s most prominent and powerful critics in the government set off calls for further protests in a week that already saw mass demonstrations in Tel Aviv and Jerusalem. After opposition parties filed a petition Friday, a high court said it would temporarily freeze Bar’s dismissal pending a judicial review. If the petition fails, Bar is expected to leave his post sometime before April 10.
Tensions have been building for months between Netanyahu and Bar, the internal security chief, with the two men and their supporters blaming each other for the policy and intelligence failures that allowed Hamas to carry out a devastating attack against Israel on Oct. 7, 2023. Bar has also called on Netanyahu to prioritize striking a deal with Hamas to recover all hostages while Netanyahu and some of his allies have stressed that the war cannot end before Hamas is wholly eliminated. Last month, Netanyahu removed Bar from the negotiating team with Hamas.
Further fueling the feud, Bar’s agency, which is responsible for counterintelligence and protecting the integrity of the Israeli political system, opened a probe last month into whether three Netanyahu aides, who were allegedly on Qatar’s payroll, maintained improper ties with a Gulf nation that is not seen as a friendly state.
Baharav-Miara has warned Netanyahu against firing Bar, saying it represented a conflict of interest and jeopardized the independence of the Shin Bet.
At the cabinet meeting late Thursday, according to Israeli media reports, Netanyahu accused Bar of disloyalty and leaking information about the hostage negotiations in Qatar. Bar, in response, issued a letter to the cabinet saying it was the Shin Bet’s duty to work “for the benefit of the citizens of Israel and not for the benefit of personal interests,” and criticized Netanyahu for blocking a probe into “serious incidents.”
“The urgent national need for such an investigation cannot be subordinated to the personal considerations of those involved in the matter,” Bar said.