Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s sudden attempt to remove the head of Israel’s domestic intelligence agency is the latest salvo in a two-year campaign by the Israeli government to exert more control over different branches of the state.
The move prompted calls on Monday for mass protests and led to criticism from business leaders and the attorney general, summoning memories of the social upheaval in 2023 that was set off by an earlier push to reduce the power of state watchdogs.
Mr. Netanyahu’s plan to hold a cabinet vote on the future of Ronen Bar, the head of the agency known as the Shin Bet, was announced less than a month after his government announced a similar intention to dismiss Gali Baharav-Miara, the Israeli attorney general. It also came amid a renewed push in Parliament by Mr. Netanyahu’s right-wing coalition to give politicians greater control over the selection of Supreme Court justices.
These moves mark a return to Mr. Netanyahu’s failed efforts in 2023 to reduce the power of institutions that had acted as a check on his government’s power, including the Supreme Court and the attorney general.
That program — often described as a judicial overhaul — proved deeply divisive, setting off months of mass protests and widening rifts in Israeli society. The campaign was suspended only after the Hamas-led attack on Israel in October 2023 revived a sense of national unity.
Now, amid a shaky cease-fire in Gaza, the easing of tension appears to have ended.
“The removal of the head of the Shin Bet should not be seen in isolation,” said Amichai Cohen, a law professor and fellow at the Israel Democracy Institute, a Jerusalem-based research group. “It’s part of the general trend of taking on these independent agencies and increasing the power of the executive.”
“The judicial overhaul is back,” Professor Cohen added.
The attempt to fire Mr. Bar prompted calls on Monday from opposition leaders and grass-roots activists for Israelis to demonstrate outside the government headquarters in Jerusalem on Wednesday, when the cabinet is set to vote on Mr. Bar’s future. A coalition of 300 major business leaders also issued a rare statement, criticizing Mr. Bar’s dismissal.
Ms. Baharav-Miara, the attorney general, issued a statement saying that Mr. Netanyahu could not begin the process of firing Mr. Bar until it was determined whether it would be lawful to do so. She said there were concerns that it would be a conflict of interest for Mr. Netanyahu — raising the prospect of a constitutional crisis if the prime minister ignored her warning.
Those developments evoked similar moves in 2023, when hundreds of thousands held weekly protests against the overhaul and the business leaders joined labor unions to hold a national strike.
The immediate context to the attempt to fire Mr. Bar was a personal dispute between the security chief and the prime minister. For months, Mr. Bar had angered Mr. Netanyahu by investigating officials in the prime minister’s office over claims that they had leaked secret documents and also worked for people connected to Qatar, an Arab state close to Hamas. Mr. Netanyahu has denied wrongdoing; the Qatari government did not respond to requests for comment.
The final straw for Mr. Netanyahu, analysts said, was most likely a rare public intervention last week from Mr. Bar’s predecessor, Nadav Argaman. In a television interview, Mr. Argaman said he might reveal further accusations of wrongdoing by the prime minister if he believed that Mr. Netanyahu was about to break the law.
Such comments from a close ally of Mr. Bar were “too much” for Mr. Netanyahu, said Nadav Shtrauchler, a former adviser to the prime minister. “He saw it as a direct threat,” Mr. Shtrauchler said. “In his eyes, he didn’t have a choice.”
But the broader context, analysts said, is a much wider dispute between Mr. Netanyahu’s right-wing alliance and its opponents about the nature and future of the Israeli state.
Mr. Netanyahu’s governing coalition is formed from parties that variously represent ultrareligious Jews seeking to preserve their privileges; and settler activists aiming to deepen Israel’s control over the West Bank and further curb Palestinian rights.
For years, these groups have resented the independence of watchdogs like the judiciary, the attorney general and the security services, which have variously moved to limit some privileges for the ultra-Orthodox; block certain moves by the settler movement; and prosecute Mr. Netanyahu for corruption. He is standing trial on charges that he denies.
The government and its supporters say that reining in the judiciary and other gatekeepers like the Shin Bet actually enhances democracy by making lawmakers freer to enact what voters elected them to do. They also say that Mr. Bar should resign for failing to prevent the Hamas-led Oct. 7, 2023, attack that ignited the war in Gaza.
The Shin Bet has “poked their noses into matters of governance, control, values, social cohesion and, of course, democracy,” Eithan Orkibi wrote in column on Monday for Israel Hayom, a right-wing daily newspaper. After Mr. Bar’s dismissal, Mr. Orkibi continued, the Shin Bet will “slowly be returned to their natural professional territory.”
But the opposition says such moves would damage democracy by removing a key check on government overreach, allowing Mr. Netanyahu’s coalition — the most conservative and nationalist in Israel’s history — to create a less pluralist and more authoritarian society. The opposition argues that Mr. Netanyahu should also take responsibility for the Oct. 7 attack, not just Mr. Bar.
“With a submissive coalition of yes men, Netanyahu is on his way to dismantling all of Israel’s gatekeepers,” Barak Seri wrote in a column for Maariv, a center-right daily. “To dismantling everything that is protecting Israel as we have known it since its establishment.”
In a separate development, the Israeli military said it had conducted strikes in central and southern Gaza against people trying to bury explosives in the ground. While Israel and Hamas are formally observing a cease-fire, negotiations to formalize the truce have stalled and Israel is conducting regular strikes on what it says are militant targets. Hamas has said the strikes have killed more than 150 people, some of them civilians. It did not immediately comment on the Monday strikes.
Myra Noveck contributed reporting.
