The Israeli Cabinet is slated to approve a motion of “no confidence” in Attorney General Gali Baharav-Miara on Sunday. Although the vote would not formally remove her from office, it is a procedure required to set the dismissal in motion.
Justice Minister Yariv Levin intends to fill the empty positions on the public committee for appointing and dismissing the AG to continue the process of her dismissal, according to Israel Hayom.
In order to dismiss the AG, a formal recommendation of the committee must be submitted to the government after a deliberation on the grounds of her firing. Then the Cabinet can convene for further deliberation and hold a final vote on the AG’s dismissal.
Israeli law further stipulates that an affirmative recommendation by the public committee is not required, but the AG has the right to a hearing before the committee and the government.
The committee consists of five members, chaired by former Supreme Court President Asher Grunis, with a government representative and a Knesset representative still needed to complete it.
The government representative, formally chosen by the justice minister, can be a former justice minister or a former AG. The parliament’s representative is elected by the coalition through a vote in the Knesset Constitution, Law and Justice Committee.
The remaining members of the committee are academic representative Prof. Ron Shapira and Israel Bar Association representative Attorney Tami Ullman.
According to the Hebrew newspaper Maariv, the dismissal procedure is lengthy and sources within Levin’s office believe that the chances of success are slim. Levin, however, is determined to advance the proceedings due to Baharav-Miara’s prolonged adversarial legal advice to the government, the report added.
According to Israeli law, Baharav-Miara does not work for the prime minister, unlike in the United States, where the attorney general is an agent of the executive branch. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has often clashed with Baharav-Miara, who was appointed by then-Prime Minister Naftali Bennett in 2022.
There are only four grounds that justify the dismissal of the AG, with one of them being ongoing and essential disagreements between the government and the AG that prevents effective cooperation—which is the justification cited in the government’s “no-confidence” vote.
An AG was dismissed once in the Jewish state’s history, in 1986, without prolonged procedures. Yitzhak Zamir was forced to resign after refusing to call off an investigation into the Shin Bet’s role in the Bus 300 affair.
The Israeli government in 2000, headed by Netanyahu, adopted the recommendations of the Shamgar Commission, which set the rules of the present procedures for removing the AG from office.
Earlier in March, Levin accused Baharav-Miara of being “the long arm of the government’s opponents.”
The government has lost confidence in Baharav-Miara “in light of her inappropriate conduct and substantial and prolonged differences of opinion between her and the government, creating a situation preventing effective cooperation,” Levin wrote to Knesset Speaker Amir Ohana and Cabinet Secretary Yossi Fuchs.
Baharav-Miara has spared “no effort to thwart the will of the voter,” the Israeli justice minister charged in the letters, accusing her of using the political divide in the country “as a spade to dig out two legal systems—one for the government’s supporters and the other for its opponents.”
