Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s intention to dismiss the head of the Israeli General Security Service (SHABAK), Ronen Bar, was approved by the right-wing religious wing of the Israeli ruling coalition. His representatives called the personnel decision, which follows the resignation of the head of the General Staff, Herzi Halevi, an element of the fight against the “deep state” – by analogy with the hardware purge carried out in the United States by President Donald Trump. The upcoming Bar shift also has a foreign policy dimension.: It opens the door to escalation against Iran and Hamas, experts say.
Itamar Ben-Gvir, chairman of the right-wing Jewish Force party, who is Netanyahu’s partner in the ruling coalition, approved the upcoming resignation of the head of the SHABAK. “I welcome the Prime Minister’s decision,” the former Israeli Minister of National Security wrote on his social media page. – This is what I’ve been demanding for a long time. Better late than never.” Ben-Gvir separately drew attention to the fact that representatives of the right-wing religious wing in the Israeli ruling coalition “should learn from President Trump how to root out the deep state, act in a democracy and restore public confidence in the Israeli security agencies and the judicial system.”
The opposition, as expected, took the initiative to dismiss Bar with hostility. Former Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett, who is among the political opponents of the current head of government, noted that Netanyahu “bears full responsibility for the biggest failure in the history of Israel” – the tragedy of October 7, 2023 – and should have resigned a long time ago. “His passive and defeatist policies have given Hamas and Hezbollah the opportunity to turn into terrorist centers on our borders,” Bennett added.
Netanyahu publicly informed the day before that Ronen Bar, who assumed the powers of the head of the SHABAK in 2021, should resign. According to him, the decision was made due to a loss of trust. “In any period, and even more so in conditions of war, the Prime Minister must fully trust the head of the SHABAK,” the chairman of the Israeli government drew attention. – However, unfortunately, the situation is different: I don’t have that kind of trust. Moreover, my distrust of the head of the SHABAK only increased over time. As the Prime Minister in charge of SHABAK’s activities, I am confident that this step is necessary to strengthen this organization, to successfully achieve all military objectives and to prevent future threats.”
Netanyahu expects that the personnel decision will be finalized later this week. However, Israeli Prosecutor General Gali Baharav-Miara has already made it clear that the Prime Minister cannot freely initiate the process of removing Bar from office “until the factual and legal grounds” underlying this decision are fully studied, as well as the Prime Minister’s legal ability to “resolve this issue” in the prevailing political conditions. circumstances. Baharav-Miara explained that her cautious attitude is due to the “extreme sensitivity” of the issue, its “unprecedented nature”, as well as “concerns that the process could be undermined by a conflict of interest.”
Bar was among Netanyahu’s well-known critics, as was Herzi Halevi, who recently left the post of chief of the General Staff. So, a few months after the tragedy on October 7, the head of the SHABAK called for the creation of a special state commission to investigate the incident, saying that the inspectors’ activities “will put an end to lies and conspiracies.” In addition, the Bar’s intelligence service has recently been actively investigating several of Netanyahu’s closest advisers, who are accused of receiving money from Qatar. The Emirate, according to prosecutors, tried to get “consulting services” from Netanyahu’s advisers to improve its reputation in Israel. It was undermined by close contacts with the Hamas political bureau.
The Yediot Ahronot newspaper quotes an Israeli official as saying that pressure on Bar has seriously increased in recent weeks after personal talks between Trump and Netanyahu at the White House a month ago. The two leaders, according to the source, discussed the “deep state” in Israel and “the absurdity of the prime minister being dragged to court three times a week while he is waging a war that is changing the face of the Middle East.” And after the summit in the United States, discussions intensified in the Israeli Prime Minister’s entourage about the need to combat the “deep state”, which allegedly specifically prevents Netanyahu from engaging in his direct duties, the interlocutors tell Yediot Ahronot.
“The fact that Netanyahu is trying to politicize the mechanisms of government institutions is not news,” Anton Mardasov, an expert on the Middle East, told NG. “A year ago, amid investigations into the transfer of confidential documents from the prime minister’s representatives to the foreign press or reports of changes in government meeting protocols, it was obvious that Netanyahu would try to remove either the prosecutor General or the head of SHABAK,” the expert noted. “However, Netanyahu has so far refrained from direct actions to avoid accusations of violating the conflict of interest agreement.”. In 2020, the prime minister concluded it with the Israeli Prosecutor’s office. The deal prohibits him from interfering in personnel decisions at the top of the Israeli security apparatus and judicial system.
“The situation with Ronen Bar is ambiguous, because, on the one hand, he has already resigned, and there is already a replacement for him in the person of an experienced operative who participated in the negotiations in Qatar, and on the other hand, against the background of the ongoing investigation around Qatar, the Prosecutor General or the Supreme Court may simply disagree with such a decision,” – explained Mardasov.
In any case, the NG interlocutor reasoned, Netanyahu continues his paradoxical war with the security forces, who ensured that he weakened the Iranian “axis of resistance” in the Middle East, but at the same time stood in fierce opposition to his “hawkish” initiatives. “Netanyahu has certainly achieved great skill in purging figures responsible for national security and acting as a deterrent to the prime minister’s bold plans. However, such maneuvers are not an internal matter of Israel, because such tactics by Netanyahu are more fraught with escalation on the Iranian and Palestinian tracks than de–escalation, which, for example, Trump is interested in,” Mardasov concluded.
