Netanyahu-Shin Bet feud deepens amid security crisis

Benjamin Netanyahu has accused the head of a domestic intelligence organisation on the 15th of April of turning parts of the service into “a private militia of the Deep State.”

According to Reuters, Netanyahu has furthered this claim by reiterating his belief that Shin Bet head Ronen Bar should leave the service as the political crisis in the agency continues.

This situation first occurred when Netanyahu sacked the current Shin Bet Chief on the 21st of March after claiming that he has an “ongoing lack of trust” after Bar blamed the executive for the security fiasco of the Hamas attack on Israel on the 7th of October 2023.

On the 31st of March, Bar was ‘replaced’ by Navy commander Eli Sharvit. While his removal was suspended by the Supreme Court, Netanyahu brought his own Shin Bet Chief to increase the crisis within his government.

The Likud party has now furthered its position against Bar, as he has lost the trust of the government, stating that he “must stop entrenching himself in his position and vacate his position immediately.”

Israel’s security establishment has been deeply divided by a case that triggered mass protests against Prime Minister Netanyahu, with demonstrators claiming he’s undermining democratic institutions.

The controversy partly revolves around accountability for the intelligence failures preceding Hamas’s October 7, 2023 attack, when gunmen killed 1,200 Israelis and took 251 hostages in the country’s most devastating security breach ever.

Facing mounting political pressure, Netanyahu appears desperate to shift blame elsewhere, seeking scapegoats for the catastrophic security failures that occurred under his leadership.

While Bar has admitted his agency’s shortcomings regarding October 7 and indicated he would step down before completing his term, he has accused Netanyahu of a significant conflict of interest. The prime minister has refused to accept any personal responsibility and rejected demands for a national investigation into the October 7 events.

Although a Justice Ministry announcement removed a censorship order that prohibited reporting on the case, it maintained restrictions on revealing the identity of the detained official.

Reuters, Maghrebi.org