Israeli opposition leader Yair Lapid announced Monday that opposition parties will jointly ask the Supreme Court to block the dismissal of Shin Bet chief Ronen Bar, after Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced his intention to remove him.
“As soon as the Shin Bet began investigating his office, Netanyahu decided to dismiss Ronen Bar in a hasty and illegal procedure, and with a clear conflict of interest,” Lapid said in statements shared by his office.
"Together with the leaders of the opposition parties, we will file a petition with the Supreme Court against these dismissals," the politician added.
Netanyahu's office announced Sunday that the government will vote this week on Bar's dismissal, just three weeks after the Israeli Prosecutor's Office ordered the Shin Bet to investigate alleged connections between several employees of the Prime Minister's Office and Qatari authorities, a scandal known as "Qatargate."
In his remarks, delivered at the start of his party's weekly meeting in Parliament, Lapid made it clear that the attempt to dismiss Bar "is for one reason only: the investigation into 'Qatargate.'"
Last night, Netanyahu defended, in a video message in Hebrew, that his decision to dismiss Bar came after losing his "confidence" in the official.
"The Shin Bet director's duty of trust is, first and foremost, to the citizens of Israel. The prime minister's expectation of personal loyalty is fundamentally flawed and directly contrary to Shin Bet law," Bar responded in a lengthy statement, reported by the Israeli press.