Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has developed a clever strategy for trying to fire Shin Bet (Israel Security Agency) Director Ronen Bar, but it clouds the real issues at stake.
Unless there is another delay, and there have been many, Netanyahu was to hold a cabinet meeting and potentially a vote on Thursday night to remove Bar, but with the decision only going into effect in a month.
Bar himself had said he was prepared to leave sometime in May, so delaying the firing decision already waters down the controversy.
But it does far more than that. It seeks to transform the debate over Bar’s firing to be about “Qatargate” instead of being about the October 7 massacre and about Netanyahu’s battle to take far greater personal control over the defense establishment, including allowing greater violence by Jewish extremists against West Bank Palestinians, than he or any other prime minister has had in decades.
Netanyahu made his moves as Bar has been 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.
Attorney-General Gali Baharav-Miara has said Netanyahu cannot fire Bar before the probe is completed.
The prime minister’s clever move is to give Bar another 30 days to finish the probe, which has dragged out for more months than it should have, and to then show him the door.
Netanyahu: The partial architect of paying money to Hamas
Qatargate itself is not a great look for Netanyahu because it suggests he is one of the architects of paying money to Hamas to contain it and keep it deterred – a concept discredited after October 7.
But making it into a fight over Bar and other law-enforcement figures overreaching and seeking to dethrone him against the public will as manifested through elections is his favored arena in which to compete politically.
And yet Qatargate is somewhat a footnote and has only been blown up, because minus Qatargate, the prime minister would have absolute discretion to fire Bar immediately, given that the Shin Bet chief’s chain of command is wired directly to the prime minister.
The real issues are: Who is to blame for failing to prevent Hamas’s October 7 invasion, will the failures be fixed, and will the Shin Bet be turned into a loyalty agency that looks the other way when Jewish extremists perpetrate violence against West Bank Palestinians, as many observers say happened to the police under National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, which is to say under Netanyahu.
Bar has said the Shin Bet bears responsibility for the October 7 failure, and he enumerated those failures in a report in great detail.
But he said Netanyahu has much shared responsibility because of policies regarding the Temple Mount, treatment of Palestinian prisoners, funding Hamas through Qatar (separate from Qatargate), the judicial overhaul, and nixing the Shin Bet’s push to assassinate Hamas’s chiefs.
In the debate over these issues, there are always two sides. But only the Shin bet and IDF have been probed.
Netanyahu has stridently refused even an iota of scrutiny on the issues more than 18 months later. He is attempting to put all of the blame on the IDF and the Shin Bet without anyone looking seriously into his role.
If Netanyahu is never probed, it will be difficult to fully learn how to avoid another similar disaster.
Likewise, if Netanyahu ousts Bar and puts someone in a place known for loyalty to him first and to national security second, as many observers say is the case with Israel Police Insp.-Gen. Daniel Levi, it could permanently damage the agency and endanger Israeli national security in deep and long-term ways.
By framing the debate as being about Qatargate and Bar finishing that probe, the prime minister cleverly hopes to keep attention away from the much more fundamental issues at the heart of the conflict.