Israel’s top court barred Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu from firing the head of the Shin Bet domestic security service on Tuesday, prompting allegations from critics of judicial overreach and warnings of an impending constitutional crisis.
After an 11-hour hearing on several petitions seeking to block or reverse Bar’s dismissal last month, the High Court of Justice issued an injunction stating that “Ronen Bar, the head of the Shin Bet, will continue to serve in his position pending a different ruling.”
The ruling and the controversy about its circumstances are the latest battleground in a broader political conflict between Israelis who recognize Netanyahu’s elected, right-wing government and those who seek judicial interventions against its mandate.
The five-page ruling from the three-justice panel on the petitions, which alleged a conflict of interest on Netanyahu’s part, provoked angry reactions on the right. Several politicians noted that Israel’s lawbook states explicitly that the government has exclusive authority over appointing and dismissing the Shin Bet head.
The Prime Minister’s Office said that the ruling is “puzzling,” and that it is “unthinkable that the government is prevented from firing a failed Shin Bet only because of the initiation of an investigation that’s not related to any of the government ministers.”
Shlomo Karhi, the Israeli communications minister, stated on social media that “the government must obey the law, because its loyalty is to the State of Israel and its laws, not an illegal injunction devoid of any authority.”
Itamar Ben-Gvir, the national security minister, stated that the “creeping erosion in the powers of a democratically-elected government by an unelected body without checks and balances, which assumes powers in complete violation of the law, should worry anyone who fears for democracy.”
“There’s no choice but to promptly resume the judicial reform,” Ben-Gvir stated.
The judicial reform is part of a campaign promise by Netanyahu’s government, which took office in 2002. According to its adherents, it seeks to restore powers, which the judiciary and other unelected officials have usurped incrementally since the 1990s, to elected politicians.
Netanyahu’s opponents have staged weekly protests across the country against the reform, which they describe as the prime minister’s personally motivated attack on the judiciary and on other institutions. Critics say it is designed to weaken the courts in order to extricate Netanyahu from corruption trials following his indictment in 2019.
Netanyahu has denied any wrongdoing and said that the trials are lawfare designed to eliminate him politically. His decision to fire Bar was due to “ongoing distrust” of the Shin Bet head, he has said.
Shin Bet was widely seen as the chief intelligence agency responsible for monitoring Gaza on Oct. 7, 2023, when thousands of Hamas terrorists killed about 1,200 people and abducted 251 back to Gaza.
Some parents, whose children were killed fighting Hamas in the Gaza Strip since Oct. 7, disrupted the hearing at the Supreme Court in Jerusalem on Tuesday and yelled, in Hebrew, “you don’t have the authority” at the judges.
Judges ordered that the hearing be held without an audience and resumed after bailiffs removed the protesters.
Netanyahu’s critics, including those who filed the petitions against Bar’s dismissal, say that it, too, is connected to Netanyahu’s legal problems.
The petitioners said that the Shin Bet is involved in an ongoing investigation into claims that Qatar paid some of Netanyahu’s staff, placing Netanyahu in a conflict of interest with respect to Bar, per the petitioners. Netanyahu has rejected that claim and said that the investigation into Qatar is being used to prevent Bar’s dismissal.
The justices did not rule on the conflict-of-interest claims, which they did not mention in the injunction.
They stated that the injunction was “in response to the request of the attorney general to allow the head of the Shin Bet to submit an affidavit supporting his factual claims by April 20.” Netanyahu is ordered to do the same by April 24.
Bar has written two letters since his dismissal—one to the cabinet and the other to the High Court of Justice. He told the cabinet that he would not step down, because the reasons he received were too vague for him to respond.
He wrote to the court last week that his dismissal followed his refusal to assist Netanyahu’s alleged request to help the prime minister avoid testifying in his corruption trial. Netanyahu has denied that charge.
In the injunction, the justices wrote that Netanyahu may continue to interview applicants for Bar’s position, which the Prime Minister’s Office stated it intends to do.
Gali Baharav-Miara, the Israeli attorney general, told Netanyahu that he cannot fire Bar before the injunction, citing what she said are concerns of a conflict of interest. The cabinet voted last month to fire her as well in a vote promoted by Yariv Levin, the justice minister.
Levin said that Baharav-Miara routinely oversteps her authority and neglects her duties, including advocating in court for government positions with which she disagrees. Baharav-Miara has not been fired, and her dismissal would likely trigger fresh petitions and court hearings.
The attorney general is facing legal action alleging a conflict of interest on her part in connection with Bar. On Sunday, a Supreme Court justice ordered Baharav-Miara to respond by April 24 to a petition claiming that she is conflicted, because her husband is a former Shin Bet official and the couple has known Bar socially for many years.
Yair Lapid, the opposition leader, wrote on social media that the government must uphold the injunction and resign for its failures on Oct. 7. Lapid, who has criticized judicial overreach.
Yair Golan, head of the left-wing Democrats party, welcomed the injunction and threatened “an unprecedented civil struggle by a determined democratic majority” in response to any government attempt to circumvent it.