The Israeli government dismissed Ronen Bar, head of the General Security Service (Shabak), early Friday morning, after Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's cabinet voted unanimously in favor of his dismissal.
Bar's last day as head of the national intelligence service will be April 10, as the government brought forward his dismissal from the original date of April 20. However, Netanyahu's office believes he could leave sooner if ministers approve a permanent replacement.
This is the first time in Israeli history that a government has dismissed the leader of Shabak (the domestic intelligence and counterterrorism agency also known as Shin Bet).
The meeting to approve the dismissal lasted nearly three and a half hours, and Bar did not attend. Knowing he would be dismissed, he sent a letter to his cabinet ministers warning that his departure was "totally tainted by conflicts of interest" and constituted a "fundamentally invalid" attempt to undermine the Shabak.
Attorney General Gali Baharav-Miara, who was present at the meeting, expressed her opposition to the measure. Her office had informed Netanyahu earlier that day that the government must obtain the recommendation of an advisory committee before considering Bar's dismissal.
The now former head of the internal intelligence service links his dismissal to the Shabak investigation into Netanyahu's office's ties to Qatar.
“It reeks of foreign interests and an unprecedented conflict of interest,” Bar added in the letter.
In the letter, Bar criticizes Netanyahu because, he claims, the prime minister has not justified the reasons for his dismissal. “Despite my request, no concrete examples were provided,” he states.
Meanwhile, Netanyahu said, according to his office, that he decided to remove Bar because he considers him “soft” in the position and that he “is not the right person to rehabilitate the organization (Shabak).”
"I've been managing diplomatic negotiations for many years. His approach was soft and not aggressive enough," Netanyahu said.
The hours leading up to Bar's dismissal were marked by thousands of people who took to the streets of Jerusalem and Tel Aviv to express their opposition to Bar's dismissal, just as the organization is investigating the "Qatargate" scandal, the alleged payments from that country to former Netanyahu advisors to create a campaign favorable to the Gulf nation.
Years earlier, the Shabak investigated how Qatar financed the Islamic terrorist group Hamas for years, without the Israeli government preventing it.
On the streets of Jerusalem, protesters vehemently repeated that "Netanyahu is a danger to democracy," as a former member of the president's Likud party stated in statements reported by the press.
The Hostages' Families Forum and other groups also joined the protests, calling for tactical reasons to end the war against Hamas in Gaza. The government ordered the resumption of military operations against the Palestinian Islamic terrorist group in the coastal enclave on Tuesday, as negotiations to free the hostages collapsed.
There are still 59 hostages held by Hamas in the Gaza Strip, including 24 who are believed to be still alive, according to Israeli intelligence sources.
Agencies contributed to this Aurora article
Those who protest are the dregs of society, wretches who only look out for their own interests...
I DO NOT AGREE AT ALL