Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Sunday night said he would propose to the cabinet to fire Shin Bet Director Ronen Bar around 18 months before his term expires.
Netanyahu moves as Bar is probing several top aides of Netanyahu who are involved in “Qatargate,” a saga in which they allegedly were paid by Qatar at the same time as handling sensitive hostage negotiations policy for the prime minister also connected to Qatar.
Normally, the police investigate alleged crimes, but given the national security dimensions, the Shin Bet has taken the lead.
It was unclear if Netanyahu will be able to fire Bar given that either Attorney-General Gali Baharav-Miara or the High Court of Justice could rule that he has a conflict of interest in seeking to fire a law enforcement officer who is probing his senior aides.
As of late Sunday night, The Jerusalem Post understands that the attorney-general may take time to map out her position on the issue.
Around 9:15 p.m., reports started to leak out that Baharav-Miara would inform Netanyahu that he cannot arbitrarily fire Bar.
At press time, official Justice Ministry sources said there still was no response from Baharav-Miara, but placing obstacles in the way of Netanyahu firing Bar in the context of the Shin Bet probing Qatargate would be consistent with the attorney-general’s relations with the prime minister to date.
A key related issue would be if Netanyahu picks Bar’s recent deputy “M”, this would restore a sense of professionalism and non-politicization to the outcome of the saga, given that the Jerusalem Post has confirmed with Shin Bet sources that M is highly respected within the agency.
In fact, Netanyahu replaced Bar with M on the negotiating team with Qatar and Hamas regarding the Israeli hostages about a month ago, seeming to signal that he was trying him out as Bar’s successor.
However, if Netanyahu recruits a new head from outside the organization, whether this new chief is accepted or not could depend on whether they at least have serious defense qualifications, such as a top IDF general, and whether they are viewed as an independent actor uninfluenced by politics, or a less qualified individual who is getting a promotion to be a figurehead, as many defense official view current Police Chief Daniel Levi.
Although Netanyahu framed his decision as part of a “continued lack of trust” in the Shin Bet chief, he did not address Qatargate in his statement.
Last week, Netanyahu urged Bar to resign from his position, but he refused.
Bar’s position has been that he will only resign earlier than his five year term’s expiration date if and when: 1) all of the remaining Israeli hostages held by Hams are returned; and 2) a state inquiry into Netanyahu’s decisions relating to October 7 is started.
According to Bar, Netanyahu has multiple times endangered the lives of Israeli hostages in order to continue the war to maintain his coalition given Finance Minister Betzalel Smotrich’s threat to quit the government if the war ends.
Further, Bar has said that the Shin Bet took responsibility for its numerous and vast October 7 failures to block Hamas’s invasion, but that Netanyahu has prevented any attempt to probe his decisions and responsibility for the colossal failure.
Bar is afraid that Netanyahu will politicize the Shin Bet as much of the defense establishment already fears the prime minister allowed Itamar Ben Gvir to do to the police.
During their recent contentious meeting, the prime minister reportedly told Bar that the government had “waited for the Shin Bet investigations, and now it’s time to hand over the keys.”
Bar previously refused to resign
Bar refused to resign and told Netanyahu that if he wanted him gone, then he would have to fire him, according to the N12 report.
The Prime Minister’s Office responded to the N12 report by saying that Netanyahu’s decision to hire a new Shin Bet chief was well within his governmental power.
“The one who appoints the Shin Bet chief is the government – and not the acting Shin Bet chief. This has always been the case in a democratic state.”
In normal circumstances, minus Qatargate, this is unquestionably true.
Whether Baharav-Miara or the High Court will step in is an open question.
Sources from NGOs involved in such issues said they expect their leadership to discuss a possible petition to the High Court in the near future.
All of this also occurs after Bar’s predecessor, who recommended him for the role, Nadav Argaman, told N12 over last weekend, “If I come to the conclusion that the prime minister has decided to act against the law, there will be no choice—I will say everything I know and have withheld until now.”
Argaman’s comments come amid efforts to revive the judicial overhaul. He said he has yet to reveal certain incriminating information because he wishes “to preserve the significance of the relationship between the head of the Shin Bet and the prime minister.”
This led to a furious reaction by Netanyahu accusing both Argaman and Bar, though Bar later distanced himself from Argaman’s comments, of acting like a mafia who were trying to depose him as the rightfully elected representative leader of the people.
Those defending Argaman have said that all he said he might do is reveal potential problematic allegations to law enforcement, which he had held back because of the intimate relations between a prime minister and his Shin Bet chief.
In Israel, the Shin Bet also is in charge of the secret service detail which protects the prime minister personally.
However, Netanyahu filed a complaint to the police against Argaman which said they are reviewing the issue.
Netanyahu has had shaky relations with Bar from the start, both because former prime minister Naftali Bennett appointed him and because Bar did not forcefully shut down opposition to the judicial overhaul.
However, their relations became much more frayed after October 7 when Netanyahu both blamed Bar and the IDF for the disaster substantively, which they all admit to, and also politically viewed them as useful targets for shiting political blame.
Bar beat out the most recent former deputy Shin Bet chief before him known as “R” in the mainly two-way race in October 2021.
Prior to June 2021 when Netanyahu was prime minister (the Bennet-Yair Lapid government displaced him June 2021-December 2022), former senior Shin Bet official and Netanyahu’s national security council chief Meir Ben-Shabbat had been the favorite.
But he was never seriously considered for the position by Bennett due to his closeness with Netanyahu and objections to his candidacy from within portions of the Shin Bet itself.
Bar had a university degree in political science and philosophy from Tel Aviv University and a master’s degree in public management from Harvard University.
Bar served in the IDF as part of the elite Sayeret Matkal Reconnaissance Special Forces unit.
Bennett served in the same unit during his IDF service, though he is younger than Bar, and some believe this influenced the final decision.
In 2011, Bar was appointed head of the Shin Bet’s operations.
Then in 2016, he was promoted to be the head of Shin Bet headquarters, the number three post responsible for force buildup.
In 2018, he replaced the other R as deputy chief of the agency.
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