The Attorney General of Israel, Gali Baharav Miara, has rejected this Friday the dismissal of Ronen Bar as head of the Shin Bet and has accused the prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, of making a decision that is “stained by a conflict of interest” due to investigations against his office on the ‘Qatargate’ scandal.
The prosecutor has highlighted in a letter sent to the Supreme Court of Israel that if the decision of the Israeli government “intact” is left “this” will undermine the ability of the future Heads of Shin Bet to act independently “, which will inevitably lead to a politicization of this position.
The highest court will have to consider on April 8 the appeals presented, including those of the opposition and that of the Attorney General-on the one that weighs a motion of censure presented by the Government-against the dismissal of bar, as collected by the newspaper ‘The Times of Israel’.
Bar has assured in a letter sent to the Supreme Court that Netanyahu asked him to say before the judges that he could not testify in his own trial for corruption due to security reasons. According to the dismissed head of the Shin Bet, his refusal to get involved in the process was what caused the distancing between them.
In response, the prime minister’s office has accused Bar to propagate “lies” on Friday, since he never asked “to use his powers inappropriately,” but they talked about the ways of carrying out their testimony before the courts safely.
In this sense, he has insisted that the exit of Bar was not for a matter of lack of “loyalty”, but for “lack of trust” in the role he played during and after the attacks of October 7, 2023 against Israel by the Palestinian militias.
The Supreme has temporarily paralyzed the dismissal of bar until all the resources presented against dismissal. The measure has been criticized by the opposition and part of the citizenship, which considers it as a punishment for the investigation of the intelligence service in which it reveals an alleged plot of corruption between the government, Qatar and the financing of Hamas.