Netanyahu spy scandal leaves PM fighting on two fronts

If Benjamin Netanyahu had hoped the winter storms, which returned to Jerusalem with a vengeance last week, would deter the protesters, he was wrong.

Outside his residence, tens of thousands of Israelis braved the lashing rain to chant furious slogans at him while the city’s police got busy with water cannons, with some smashing up the demonstrators’ cars.

In barely credible scenes, an incandescent retired general was dragged away by officers and senior politicians knocked down.

The unrest continued into the weekend, with over 100,000 people nationwide rallying on Saturday night in some of the largest demonstrations the country has seen in weeks. More protests are planned for Sunday.

By early Sunday morning, two people had been arrested after breaching a fence outside the Israeli prime minister’s residence, the Jerusalem Post reported.

Photographs from the protests showed crowds of people waving Israeli flags and setting off smoke flares as police carried demonstrators away.

Their cause? Not the imposition of a sweeping new tax; nor even the resumption of fighting in Gaza, although that certainly spiced the brew.

Instead, the grievance that prompted such fury was the dismissal of a shadowy intelligence official, Ronen Bar, the director of the Israeli Security Agency, commonly known as Shin Bet.

The controversy has made little impact in the West, where the dismissal of a civil servant – fair or otherwise – would generally be regarded as within a prime minister’s proper remit.

Yet in Israel, it is greeted by many as a step on the path to dictatorship; a potentially irrevocable escalation in the constitutional crisis that has been brewing since before Oct 7.

On Thursday night, Mr Netanyahu’s coalition cabinet voted unanimously to dismiss Mr Bar, claiming a lack of trust in him. An unnamed source, understood to be close to the prime minister, later made the incendiary claim that the top spy had known about the Oct 7 attack hours before but failed to act.

Mr Bar, 59, rejected the move and described it as “entirely tainted by conflicts of interest”, alleging sinister motives on the part of the prime minister.

Following an emergency petition on Friday, the High Court ordered a temporary injunction on the dismissal.

But that only inflamed matters further, with Mr Netanyahu saying he would refuse to abide by the ruling and a key ally calling for “judicial overhaul now”.

The prime minister and his allies are now gunning for Gali Baharav-Miara, the attorney general who is Mr Bar’s only protector at the top of government, promising to sack her too.

In the meantime, we now have the extraordinary spectacle of a former Shin Bet chief, an ally of Mr Bar’s, being questioned by police, amid accusations by Mr Netanyahu of an anti-democratic “deep state” at work.

For his critics, it is precisely the prime minister’s alleged meddling in the security apparatus that threatens Israeli freedoms.

It all raises the question: after nearly 80 years, are the wheels coming off the Middle East’s only democracy?

The answer – to the extent that a clear one exists – draws together the fundamental issues currently at play in the Jewish state: the tragedy of Oct 7 and who is to blame; the future of Gaza; the hostages; the expansion of Israel; and Donald Trump.

Efraim Sneh, Israel’s former deputy defence minister and a retired brigadier general of the Israeli Defence Forces, said: “You have to understand, in Israel, the internal security service has a very special status – totally, totally non-political.

“People have a great esteem for their professionalism and ethics.”

Describing the organisation as the “gatekeeper of democracy”, Mr Sneh said: “Current service people cannot do anything because it’s against the law. But the former staff, you’ll see them on the streets.”

The prime minister describes a breakdown in relations with Mr Bar. Put simply, he says he can’t work with him any more.

The tortuous process of the hostage negotiations, for which Mr Bar was one of Israel’s point men until recent weeks, would test any working relationship.

This is particularly plausible given the fact Mr Bar is reportedly far keener on offering accommodations to recover the hostages than his political boss.

Giora Eiland, a former head of Israel’s national security council, said: “Netanyahu becomes less and less patient towards people who have different ideas than him.

“There were a lot of very, very, I would say, emotional debates between Bar – not only him – but especially between him and Netanyahu in regard to the potential hostage deal.”

The relationship had certainly become difficult but Mr Bar has reportedly said the claim they could no longer work together is false.

Many believe the real tipping point was Mr Bar’s decision last month to launch a Shin Bet investigation into alleged Qatari spies in the prime minister’s office.

Two of Mr Netanyahu’s close political advisers have now been questioned by police over allegations they received payments from the Gulf state during the war in return for improving the country’s image in Israel.

This is deeply embarrassing for the prime minister.

However, the Shin Bet investigation is thought to be more ambitious than mere influence-peddling.

It is already known that the security service is probing the extent to which Qatari payments to Hamas in years before Oct 7 – which Israel has long facilitated as part of its disastrous strategy to keep a lid on the Gaza strip – contributed to the massacre.

If, as some have speculated, Shin Bet finds evidence that the policy of facilitating the payments to Hamas could have been influenced by Qatar via its alleged spies in Mr Netanyahu’s office, that would be politically fatal.

There is currently no evidence for this, a point Mr Eiland emphasised.

But he added: “This is a far-reaching conclusion and, at the moment, no one can say it. But that is exactly why the investigation is needed.”

The former intelligence officer said he understood that Israel’s decision to facilitate Qatari payments to Hamas did not come from soldiers or officials.

He said: “Most of the real initiatives in the security arena come bottom-up: someone from the military, someone from the other intelligence agencies comes up with ideas, with a plan, and it is approved by the cabinet.

“Here it was the other way around. Someone might ask himself where exactly this initiative came from? Who exactly thought about that and why, and is there a connection between this and the fact that some of his people were so close to the Qataris?

“We still have a question mark here, but this is something which is very concerning if it was true.”

Mr Bar said in response to the cabinet’s decision to fire him: “They seek to prevent the pursuit of truth regarding both the events leading up to the [Oct 7] massacre and the serious affairs currently under investigation by the Israel Security Agency.”

Brewing for several weeks, the suggestion that Mr Bar could be fired sent shock waves through Israel’s security community.

Nadav Argaman, a former Shin Bet chief, told the Channel 12 news station he could release compromising information if the prime minister broke the law.

Mr Netanyahu subsequently filed a complaint against him, and on Thursday, Mr Argaman was questioned by police over allegations of blackmail.

‘Leftist deep state’ conspiracy

The prime minister now talks freely about a “leftist deep state” conspiracy.

It has prompted many in Israel to speculate that he has been emboldened by his now close relationship with Mr Trump – both of whom use language like that but also ignore convention to sack officials he doesn’t perceive as personally loyal.

Mr Sneh said: “He returned from Washington [in February] encouraged, inspired and energised to imitate Trump. He wants to do the same but more.”

For Mr Eiland, however, Mr Netanyahu’s premium on personal loyalty goes back long before his relationship with the US president.

“He did something exactly like this nine years ago when he had to nominate the director of Mossad [foreign intelligence]. He actually selected one of them, and he told him that he was going to be the director of Mossad. He asked him one question: ‘are you going to be loyal to me?’ That person said: ‘Well, I will be loyal to the nation.’ Not good enough. Ten minutes later, Netanyahu announced that another person would be the director of Mossad.

“Netanyahu does not understand this distinction between being loyal to the nation and loyal personally.”

With most people in Israel clearly able to remember the horrors of the Second Intifada, Shin Bet’s perceived effectiveness is crucial to the national peace of mind in a way people in the West would be unlikely to feel about their own security services.

The mere suggestion that its professionalism could be tainted by a political appointee explains much of the fury in Jerusalem and Tel Aviv last week.

Israelis oppose Mr Bar’s dismissal by 46 to 31 per cent, according to a recent Channel 12 poll.

Former senior judges feel they have the wind in their sails when they warn, as ex-Supreme Court president Aharon Barak did this week, of civil war.

“We have reached an untenable situation,” he said. “The rift is huge. The train is rolling downhill.”

Israel’s lack of a codified constitution, Mr Netanyahu’s detractors contend, makes it more critical to avoid even the suggestion of politicising organs of the state.

But there is a significant school of thought that, far from a Right-wing takeover of impartial institutions, Israel’s recent and current political turmoil is as much the fault of unelected jurists in both the courts and the Attorney General’s office.

An activist supreme court has been allegedly inferring a constitution where none exists, wrongly tampering with the decisions of elected politicians.

The current turmoil is a reheating of Mr Netanyahu’s controversial attempts at judicial overhaul before Oct 7, which prompted months of protest.

His critics saw them as a naked attempt to blunt the legal constraints on his government and evade justice for his own alleged corruption (which he denies), whereas he argued it was an attempt to curb the power of unelected and increasingly liberal-biased judges.

As ever, the massacre of 2023 casts its shadow.

Mr Netanyahu continues to stall a full state commission inquiry into the failings that led to the Hamas attack, including political decisions.

That position has been put under increased strain in the last month by, first the publication of the IDF’s self-commissioned report and, secondly, that of Shin Bet.

The military, as might be expected of professional soldiers, stuck rigidly to their self-imposed brief: their own performance, or lack of it, before and on the day of the attack.

Shin Bet, however, did not feel so constrained. Although they acknowledged their own failings, their report was seen as pointing the wider strategic finger of blame at Mr Netanyahu’s government, criticising the flow of Qatari money and the policy of keeping a lid on Gaza, rather than attacking Hamas.

Combined with the Qatar investigation, this sealed Mr Bar’s fate in the eyes of many commentators.

This weekend, Mr Netanyahu’s coalition partners from the far-Right parties are doubly delighted.

First, they are thrilled that Israel has restarted fighting in Gaza. But as key advocates of Israeli expansion in the West Bank, they are thought to be keen on a weaker Shin Bet.

Mr Sneh said: “The violent settlers in the West Bank are aggressively against it because it is the only, only organisation that dares stand in front of it.”

Itamar Ben-Gvir, a leading settler himself, withdrew his Otzma Yehudit faction from Mr Netanyahu’s coalition in January in protest at the ceasefire.

This week he returned to government, retaking his post as policing minister.

For many protesting outside Mr Netanyahu’s residence last week, the police have long lost any claim to be politically neutral, further enhancing the elite non-political status of Shin Bet in their eyes.

With his support now secure, and that of fellow settler finance minister Betzalel Smotrich, Mr Netanyahu has a far greater chance of getting his upcoming budget through the Knesset and keeping his government intact.

For a man currently on trial in his own country and the subject of an international arrest warrant, staying in power matters.

What Mr Bar’s impending departure means for the remaining hostages is less clear.

In his letter, the intelligence chief suggested one of Mr Netanyahu’s motives was to avoid having to do a further deal with Hamas.

In reality, Mr Bar and his organisation have been successfully sidelined from the formal negotiations for some time anyway.

Whatever happens in the next few days, the constitutional storm will rage for a long while yet.