Will Netanyahu Succeed in Dismissing the Head of the Shin Bet?

On March 20, the Israeli government voted to remove Ronen Bar from his position as the head of the Israeli Security Agency (the Shin Bet). The decision followed Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s March 16 statement, in which he said that he had lost trust in Bar. 

At first glance, this decision appears to be the logical result of the stupendous intelligence failure of the Shin Bet (alongside Israeli Defense Forces [IDF] military intelligence) to provide advanced warning of the attack perpetrated by Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad on Oct. 7, 2023. Yet, upon closer examination, the government appears to have other, highly problematic motivations. Given Israel’s current political and legal crisis, the removal of Bar could help set off a serious constitutional crisis—one that many in Israel have been warning about for more than two years. 

The Shin Bet

The Shin Bet is Israel’s internal security agency, responsible for protecting the state of Israel from threats originating from inside the country and the territories it controls (its official English name is the Israel Security Agency; the name “Shin Bet” derives from the organization’s Hebrew acronym). In 2002, the missions and powers of the organization were enumerated in the Shin Bet Law. According to the law, the Shin Bet is entrusted with preserving the security of the state of Israel and protecting Israel’s democratic institutions against threats of terrorism, sabotage, subversion, espionage, and disclosure of state secrets. 

The Shin Bet Law also addressed several other significant issues, highly relevant for the current crisis surrounding the head of the Shin Bet. First, the law clarified that the authority to appoint the head of the Shin Bet lies with the government, based on the recommendation of the prime minister. The term of office of the head of the Shin Bet is five years, but the government is authorized to remove the head of the Shin Bet from office before the end of his term. Second, the law stipulated that the Shin Bet is subject to the government’s authority and that the prime minister is the government member directly in charge of the organization. Article 4(c) of the law placed a check on the legal powers of the Shin Bet, as well as on the prime minister’s authority to assign tasks thereto. It states that: 

The service will operate in a mamlachti manner; no mission shall be imposed on the service for the promotion of party-political interests.

The Hebrew term mamlachti is difficult to translate into English. This is because it has several meanings in Israeli public life: It means lack of partisanship, publicness, professional commitment to fulfill the legal mandate assigned to the public organization in question (as opposed to conduct driven by political or personal interests), and advancement of the national common good. In the Shin Bet’s context, it means that the Shin Bet’s head has unique authority: When ordered by the prime minister to perform a task that is partisan or political in nature, the head of the Shin Bet may refuse to carry out the order. 

Responsibility for Oct. 7

On Oct. 7, militants of Hamas and of other Palestinian armed groups, alongside Palestinian civilians, invaded Israel from the Gaza Strip, killing some 1,200 Israeli civilians and soldiers, and kidnapping 251 civilians and soldiers, some of whom are still held hostage in the Gaza Strip. The attack is considered Israel’s most significant military failure from an operational and intelligence perspective. 

The failure is partly explained by the “conception” that prevailed prior to the attack among Israeli political and security leaders that Hamas was militarily deterred by Israel’s past military operations in the Gaza Strip, and preferred economic growth and relative calm over active hostilities. They also believed that Hamas was occupied primarily with the day-to-day administration of the Gaza Strip and that it was not interested in entering into an armed conflict with Israel in the foreseeable future. This conception explains why the Israeli government allowed Qatar to transfer significant amounts of money into the Gaza Strip, purportedly to assist low-income Palestinian families, pay salaries for Palestinian civil servants, and develop civilian infrastructures—with the aim of curbing popular support for yet another round of intense violence. In reality, as it was later found out, a significant portion of Qatar’s aid financed Hamas’s military buildup and preparations for the attack that was carried out on Oct. 7. 

The Israeli government’s and security agencies’ assumption that Hamas did not intend to attack Israel proved fatally wrong. Hamas had been carefully planning a large-scale attack on Israel since 2021, and indications of this plan gathered by Israeli intelligence were largely disregarded. As close as a few hours before the attack, the Shin Bet discovered that several dozen Israeli SIM cards, which Hamas had purchased a few years before and Israel was monitoring, were suddenly “turned on.” This should have served as indication that Hamas was planning a large-scale raid on Israel; instead, the Shin Bet assumed that this was either a drill or a plan for a limited raid into a specific destination inside of Israel. On the basis of this assessment, the Shin Bet deployed a team of just 15 service members (the Tequila team) to the area surrounding the Gaza Strip. 

Immediately after the calamity of Oct. 7, Israel postured itself for war, including a large-scale IDF invasion into the Gaza Strip and extensive use of force, which is still ongoing (with varying degrees of intensity). In the first few months of the war, it was widely accepted across the Israeli political spectrum that it would be premature to formally assign responsibility for the failures of Oct. 7.  The head of the Shin Bet, the IDF chief of staff, the minister of defense, and the prime minister himself remained in their respective positions as they directed military operations in the Gaza Strip and later in Lebanon and other fronts. 

Yet, since the intensity of the war started to subside in 2024, there has been growing pressure to hold those responsible for Oct. 7 accountable. In April 2024, Aharon Haliva, the chief of IDF military intelligence, resigned; in November 2024, Netanyahu fired the minister of defense, Yoav Gallant (this specific termination was more connected to the conduct of the war rather than to how it started); and in January 2025, the chief of staff, Herzi Halevi, and the commander of the IDF Southern command, Yaron Finkelman, announced their resignations. As for Ronen Bar, as early as Oct. 16, 2023, he wrote an email to his employees in which he took responsibility for the failures leading up to the Oct. 7 attack. In early 2024 it was leaked to the press that Bar intended to retire from his position before the end of his designated five-year term of service (October 2026). He did not announce a specific resignation date (but it may take place in a matter of weeks). 

While Bar, as well as the senior echelon of the IDF, accepted responsibility for failures leading up to Oct. 7, the prime minister has refrained from explicitly doing so. Moreover, the government refuses to form a national commission of inquiry to investigate the said failures. National commissions of inquiry—independent investigative bodies, which are headed by a judge and whose membership is determined by the president of the Supreme Court—are the traditional method used in Israel to investigate major governmental failures, including in the realm of national security (e.g., the Agranat Commission for the Yom Kippur War; the Kahan Commission for investigating the Sabra and Shatila massacre). While a strong majority of the Israeli public favors the establishment of a national commission of inquiry to investigate Oct. 7 failures, the government is still considering the idea. It seems to fear that a commission of inquiry would place at least some of the blame on the prime minister’s shoulders, given his personal involvement in facilitating Qatari funding for the Gaza Strip. 

Still, several internal inquiries regarding the Oct. 7 failures have already been conducted by the IDF and the Shin Bet. The inquiries conducted and concluded to date by the IDF have focused on the chain of events that unfolded on Oct. 7 itself, including extensive operational failures. The Shin Bet’s internal inquiry, by contrast, casts a wider net and also delves into the activities of the Shin Bet leading up to Oct. 7, and its failure to understand Hamas’s plans. The full inquiry report remains classified, but on March 4 the Shin Bet released an unclassified summary. While most of the summary discusses the intelligence failures of the Shin Bet, it also alleges that the Shin Bet did not share the widely held, optimistic conception of the Gaza Strip; it did not consider Hamas to be deterred. The summary goes on to suggest that the Shin Bet specifically warned against the transfer of Qatari funds to the Gaza Strip, and that it proposed specific action plans to target Hamas leaders. Its warnings and proposals were rejected, however, by the senior political echelon—in other words, the prime minister. 

This blame game has likely been a source of tension between the head of the Shin Bet and Netanyahu. Bar’s unwillingness to publicly support Netanyahu’s claims that he should be relieved from extensive testimony in his corruption trial for reasons of personal security, as well as Bar’s public support for the establishment of the national commission of inquiry into the Oct. 7 failures, have also contributed to the growing tension between the prime minister and the Shin Bet chief. 

“Qatargate”

In addition to the above alleged sources of conflict between Bar and Netanyahu, a scandal known as “Qatargate” has helped form the context for the government’s decision to seek the head of the Shin Bet’s removal. In November 2025, Israeli media outlets reported that the Israeli attorney general had authorized the Shin Bet and the police to investigate claims that several officials in Netanyahu’s inner circle—members of his communication team—had committed national security breaches, including establishing financial contacts with Qatar. The affair was soon dubbed “Qatargate.” 

According to these and follow-up reports, Qatar made payments to Jonathan Urich, Netanyahu’s communications adviser, and to two other members of his communication team—Eli Feldstein and Israel Einhorn. Apparently, these payments were made in return for work Urich and his partners undertook for Qatar in parallel with their part-time job in the prime minister’s office through Urich’s private consulting company. The fact that a foreign state (specifically, one that is generally hostile to Israel and is a known supporter of Hamas) allegedly intervened in the prime minister’s office by adding to its payroll officials so close to the prime minister, and that these officials did not notify the proper authorities about such connections and their potential conflict of interests, raises serious concerns. 

The Shin Bet’s investigation of these allegations is ongoing, and the precise details of the case, as well as the nature of the evidence, are not fully clear. On March 31, however, Urich and Feldstein were arrested, and on April 1, it was revealed that they are suspected of committing the following offenses: contacts with a foreign agent, which carries a maximum sentence of 15 years (according to Section 114 of Israel’s Penal Law 1977, a foreign agent is a person sent by a foreign state to gather secret information or harm national security); disclosing secret information; money laundering; and breach of trust. 

From the outset, Netanyahu denied any wrongdoing by his advisers regarding Qatargate. On March 22, he released a taped statement claiming that the entire Qatargate investigation is simply an attempt to prevent the removal of Bar from office, and a plot to oust him from office. In a statement on X, he claimed (in Hebrew and English) that the investigation was the work of the “deep state,” seemingly trying to delegitimize the investigation and discredit the professional integrity of the head of the Shin Bet. 

The Court Proceedings

On March 20, in the midst of these growing political tensions, and absent a specific retirement date for the head of the Shin Bet, Netanyahu’s cabinet unanimously adopted the prime minister’s recommendation and voted to dismiss Bar. This decision was adopted despite the explicit objections of the attorney general, who opined that the correct process was not followed and that the prime minister was barred from involvement in the decision due to a conflict of interests (as detailed below). Immediately afterward, the Movement for the Quality of Government—a leading Israeli anti-corruption nongovernmental organization—and several opposition parties submitted petitions to the Israeli Supreme Court, sitting as the High Court of Justice, challenging the decision.  The legal claims elaborated in the petitions are, in brief, that while the government clearly has authority under the Shin Bet Law to remove the head of the Shin Bet, the exercise of this authority is nonetheless governed by Israeli administrative law, which was breached by the government in the circumstances of the case. This distinction between the existence of legal authority and the duty to use it in lawful ways is indeed a bedrock principle of Israeli administrative law. And at the heart of the legal case is the question of whether the government complied with the substantive and procedural requirements of Israeli administrative law when using its power to remove Bar from office. 

The petitions list several specific grounds for judicial intervention. First, the petitioners argue that the head of the Shin Bet should have been given the full opportunity to respond to the allegations leveled against him before the decision to terminate him was made. Furthermore, they claim that the attorney general and the vetting committee that approved Bar’s appointment were not consulted before the decision to remove him and that this amounted to a serious procedural flaw in the decision-making process. Third, they claim that the prime minister’s decision—and, by extension, the government’s decision to approve his recommendation to remove Bar—was not impartial, since Netanyahu had a conflict of interest in the matter due to the ongoing investigations by the Shin Bet into the Qatargate scandal, which implicate his closest advisers. 

Furthermore, the petitioners also claim that the government’s decision was based on impermissible considerations. Specifically, the prime minister emphasized in his aforementioned public statements his lack of personal trust in the head of the Shin Bet. Yet the position of head of the Shin Bet is not a “position of trust” that the prime minister may appoint and dismiss at will. Rather, the position has some characteristics of a legal “gatekeeper,” who has the legal authority to refuse to use the agency’s extensive legal powers to carry out improper requests made by the political echelon. The legal authority to refuse improper requests puts the head of the Shin Bet, inevitably, on a potential collision course with the prime minister, and the exercise by the head of the Shin Bet of said legal authority cannot serve as a basis for removal, lest his or her independence be compromised. 

On March 21, the court issued a temporary order, freezing the legal effect of the decision to remove Bar from office until the court had heard the petitions (the first hearing in the case took place on April 8). Until then, the government could not appoint a new head for the Shin Bet. Still, in a later decision, the court allowed the prime minister to interview new candidates for the position. On March 30, the prime minister declared that he had selected retired Adm. Eli Sharvit as successor for Bar, only to revoke that decision within a few hours without providing a clear explanation for the abrupt change (most probably, this about-face was linked to media reports that Sharvit had participated in a demonstration against the government’s judicial overhaul policy and wrote an article criticizing President Trump’s environmental policy, placing pressure on the prime minister).

On April 4, the attorney general—Gali Baharav Miara—submitted her response to the petitions to the court. Under Israeli law, the attorney general is an independent legal professional, considered to be the primary “gatekeeper” for the executive branch. She is appointed by the government, but her legal opinions remain independent of the government’s positions. Hence, in appropriate cases, the attorney general may submit to the court legal briefs that contradict the government’s public position. While the attorney general typically represents the government in legal proceedings, in exceptional cases where there is discrepancy between the government’s position and that of the attorney general, the latter may allow the government to retain a private attorney to present its position to the court. In the past, instances in which the attorney general refused to represent the government were very rare; during the current government’s term, however, such situations have become more frequent. This, it seems, is one of the main reasons that the current government seeks to also remove the attorney general from office. 

The brief submitted by the attorney general’s office to the court supports the petitioners’, not the government’s, claims. Specifically, it concurs that the government did not follow the necessary procedure in removing Bar from his position. The brief further stresses the importance of maintaining the independence of the head of the Shin Bet from political intervention and alludes to the suspicious circumstances of his removal during the Qatargate investigations. 

The attorney general’s brief also includes in an annex a “notice on behalf of the head of the Shin Bet.” In this notice, Bar lays down his principled position regarding the importance of the independence of the position of head of the Shin Bet. Bar writes the following (informally translated): 

The head of the Shin Bet is obligated to implement the policy of the government and its head, but he is not a “trusted servant” or “personal trustee” of the Prime Minister or of any other political figure. From the moment he is appointed to the position, the head of the service is required to operate through a full and professional working relationship with the Prime Minister, but at the same time to act solely to fulfill his duties according to the law and to prevent any attempt to misuse the powers of the service and its instruments.
....
[A]dvancing termination processes that are carried out in haste during a sensitive period, while criminal investigations of the Prime Minister’s associates are being conducted, without proper procedure and detailing the allegations, and without being given a fair opportunity to respond to the allegations, means conveying a clear message to the entire chain of command in the Shin Bet, including to the next heads of the service – that if they lose favor in the eyes of the political echelon, their dismissal will be immediately considered. 
This seriously harms the ability of the head of the service and the entire service to perform their functions, which may involve abuse of the relationship of subordination holding between security agency heads and the political echelon. There is a direct connection between the ability of the head of the Shin Bet to fulfill his duties faithfully and the existence of proper termination mechanisms. A potentially dangerous, yet possible, consequence of such a violation could be the transformation of the service into a secret police force.

The prime minister and the government are represented in this case by a private attorney. His initial response to the petitions submitted to the court raises several preliminary objections. The first issue raised in the response is the justiciability of the issue, given its security-related subject matter. Second, the response raises the question of the petitioners’ standing as public interest litigants to challenge the dismissal of Bar. (It should be noted that the existing jurisprudence of the Israeli Supreme Court does not support a strict application of justiciability and standing doctrines in public interest litigation, and it would be very surprising if these claims are accepted by the court.) 

On the more substantive level, the response focuses on the loss of trust by the prime minister and the government as a whole in the head of the Shin Bet, due to his conduct prior to Oct. 7,  as well as professional disagreements that have intensified in recent months. It also makes the point that the dire and exceptional security situation in which Israel currently finds itself justifies the government’s decision to take immediate action, with relatively little regard for legal niceties. 

On April 8, the court heard lengthy oral arguments from the petitioners, the government, and the representative of the attorney general. The discussion, which was broadcast live on the court’s website, was heated—leading at some points to the suspension of the hearing and the issuance of an order of the court to clear the courtroom due to repeated interruptions from spectators (mostly supporters of the government). At the end of the hearing, the court issued a short order in which it extended the temporary order freezing the removal of Bar. The court also indicated it was willing to discuss the factual disagreement holding between the parties and offered both Bar and the prime minister the opportunity to submit signed affidavits to the court, if they wished to do so. Furthermore, the court urged the attorney general, the government, and the prime minister to try to reach a legal settlement and submit it to the court by April 20. 

***

The legal discussion surrounding the removal of Bar from his position as head of the Shin Bet is one of the critical junctures in the current struggle over the general direction of Israeli democracy. First, it highlights the fact that Netanyahu and his close associates are embroiled “up to their neck” in legal troubles. Netanyahu himself is currently standing trial in the Jerusalem District Court for bribery, fraud, and breach of trust offenses, and his close associates are involved in Qatargate and other legal investigations (relating to harassment of witnesses in the Netanyahu corruption trial). The application of the rule of law to the prime minister and those around him is a test of the resilience of the legal system and the Israeli rule of law against the strong political machine Netanyahu has built over the years, which he now appears to be deploying against it. 

Second, Netanyahu has presented the investigation of his advisers as a further attempt by the opposition and the so-called deep state—the different law and order institutions of the state—to resort to criminal investigations in order to oust him from office. This has only fueled his resolve to limit the powers of independent gatekeepers within the Israeli government, or to remove them altogether. The decision to remove Bar should be understood in the context of the government’s decision to initiate, in parallel, the process of removing the attorney general, the change of the process for selecting judges, and a host of other steps in the same direction (e.g., the removal of several legal advisers in essential governmental departments and politicization of the judicial system ombudsman position).  

Third, the petition to the court provides an opportunity for Israeli media to discuss a potential constitutional crisis. There is the immediate possibility that the court orders the government not to remove Bar from his office but the government nonetheless proceeds with the appointment of a substitute or attempts to subvert the court’s decision in other ways. However, the court and the government have numerous exit routes from such a collision. The court could require the government to afford a hearing to the head of the Shin Bet again, to consult with the appointments committee, or to press the parties to try to agree on a timeline for the change of leadership in the Shin Bet. 

Either way, the unique spectacle of large demonstrations throughout Israel—by a mostly liberal crowd—in support of an ousted head of an internal security agency, and calls by some government ministers to the prime minister to ignore the Supreme Court’s rulings, signifies the unique predicament in which Israel finds itself. In the midst of a terrible war, with hostages still in the hands of Hamas, the government nonetheless invests its energy in a campaign against domestic gatekeepers to weaken the system of checks and balances that constrains its powers.   

The events surrounding Ronen Bar’s removal also invite reflection on the current relationship between the political and legal systems in Israel. The circumstances in which the prime minister is standing trial, and his close advisers are suspects in a security-related investigation, require extreme caution and common sense from all sides. The removal of the head of the Shin Bet, which would be a delicate matter even in calmer times, requires even more caution. Instead of doing so, the government has approached the issue in a manner that appears to be aggressive and imprudent, explicitly disregarding the opinion of the attorney general about the legal process that must be followed. The result is a legal case in which, once again, the Supreme Court is dragged into a high-stakes showdown where it will suffer political fallout from every route it might choose to take.