The head of Shin Bet, Israel’s domestic intelligence agency, has been dismissed, a week after Benjamin Netanyahu said he had lost confidence in him, and despite three days of protests against the move.
“The government unanimously approved prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s proposal to end ISA [Israeli Security Agency] director Ronen Bar’s term of office,” a statement from the prime minister’s office said.
According to the statement, Bar will leave his post when his successor is appointed, or by 10 April at the latest.
In a letter made public late on Thursday, Bar described his dismissal as being motivated by Netanyahu’s “personal interests”. The security chief referred to the conclusions drawn by his agency’s investigation into the Hamas attack on 7 October 2023, which said “a policy of quiet had enabled Hamas to undergo massive military buildup”.
He also pointed to alleged payments from Qatar to people close to the leader, as he vowed to defend himself to the “appropriate bodies”.
He added: “The dismissal of the head of the service at this time at the initiative of the Prime Minister sends a message to all those involved, a message that could put the optimal outcome of the investigation at risk. This is a direct danger to the security of the State of Israel.”
Shin Bet has been investigating Netanyahu’s close aides for alleged breaches of national security, including leaking classified documents to foreign media and allegedly taking money from Qatar, which is known to have given significant financial aid to Hamas.
Bar, whose tenure was meant to end next year, was appointed by the previous Israeli government, which briefly forced Netanyahu from power between June 2021 and December 2022.
His relations with the prime minister had been strained even before the 7 October Hamas attack, which sparked the war in Gaza, notably over proposed judicial reforms that had split the country. Relations worsened after the 4 March release of the internal Shin Bet report on the attack, which acknowledged the agency’s own failures but also pointed to wider policy issues in the runup to the attack.
In a statement on Friday, a Netanyahu spokesperson said: “The Israeli government, which is in charge of the Shin Bet, has lost all confidence in Ronen Bar, who continues to cling to his seat while cynically using the families of the kidnapped and politically incorrect use of his position to fabricate futile, unfounded investigations.
“Ronen had the opportunity to retire with honor after his searing failure on October 7 … But [he] preferred not to attend the government meeting dealing with his case.”
A series of high-ranking officials seen as responsible for mistakes and misjudgments in the period before the Hamas attack have resigned. Netanyahu himself has not accepted any responsibility for Israel’s worst ever security disaster, in which 1,200 people, mostly civilians, were killed, and has resisted calls for a powerful commission of inquiry.
Israel’s opposition and an NGO said on Friday they had filed a petition against the decision to fire Bar.
The Movement for Quality Government in Israel denounced “an unlawful decision … posing a real risk to the national security of the State of Israel”, while opposition leader Yair Lapid’s centre-right party said it has filed an appeal with the supreme court, and denounced what it called “a decision based on flagrant conflict of interest”.
On Friday, in an interview with Channel 12, the former head of Shin Bet, Yoram Cohen, condemned Bar’s sacking and alleged that the prime minister had compelled him to carry out acts of questionable legitimacy when he was in charge of the agency.
Cohen previously alleged that in 2011 Netanyahu asked him to wiretap the government’s top defence officials to ensure that ‘‘they were not leaking information from a particularly sensitive security meeting’’, the Times of Israel reported.
Netanyahu is facing a potential jail sentence at the conclusion of an ongoing corruption trial. The 75-year-old politician, who came to power for the first time in 1996 and has served 17 years as prime minister, is giving evidence twice weekly.
On Friday, hundreds of demonstrators protested for a fourth consecutive day against the move to sack Bar, joining with protesters angry at the decision to resume fighting in Gaza while 59 Israeli hostages remain in the Palestinian territory.