After chaotic hearing, High Court rules Netanyahu can’t fire Shin Bet chief Bar for now

The High Court of Justice issued an interim injunction on Tuesday stating that Shin Bet chief Ronen Bar must remain in office until further notice and giving the government and the attorney general until April 20 to reach a compromise over the legal dispute surrounding the unprecedented vote last month to fire him.

The court told the government that it cannot take any action to remove Bar from office while the interim injunction is in place, including declaring that it has found his replacement, and must not impede his authorities as Shin Bet chief or change the working relationship between the government and the domestic security agency. The court said, however, that interviews for a replacement can still be conducted.

The decision came after an 11-hour hearing on petitions filed against the firing. It began chaotically when protestors, including Likud MK Tally Gotliv, disrupted proceedings so severely that the judges were forced to suspend the hearing and later to order Gotliv and other protesters forcibly removed from the court.

Throughout the hearing, all three judges expressed concern over procedural flaws in the way Bar was fired; the court president also opined that the attorney general had been right to tell the government to consult a key advisory committee before dismissing the security chief.

At the hearing’s conclusion, Cabinet Secretary Yossi Fuchs and representatives from the Attorney General’s Office appeared willing to hold a dialogue as to how to resolve the dispute, after Justice Noam Sohlberg initially suggested in court that the matter be sent to the advisory committee for senior civil service appointments for its recommendation.

The case is about far more than Bar himself, and is seen as part of the government’s clash with judicial authorities and its efforts to remove checks on its power.

Supreme Court President Isaac Amit is presiding over the case, together with incoming deputy president Sohlberg and Justice Daphne Barak-Erez.

The petitioners in the case — civil society groups and opposition parties  — assert that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had a clear conflict of interest in removing Bar from office, given the Shin Bet’s ongoing investigation into close aides to the premier who are alleged to have conducted PR work for Qatar while working for him.

Critics more broadly accuse Netanyahu of seeking to scapegoat Bar for the October 7, 2023, Hamas attack on Israel while shirking responsibility himself.

The prime minister, meanwhile, has maintained that he has every right by law to remove the head of the internal security agency, and doubly so in light of the failures that enabled the Gaza onslaught.

He has also claimed, without offering evidence, that the so-called Qatargate investigation — which has cropped up in addition to Netanyahu’s ongoing corruption trial, and another scandal surrounding the leak of classified documents from his office to the foreign press — is part of an effort by the so-called deep state in Israel to harm his leadership.

Chaos in the courtroom

Pro-government protesters disrupted the hearing from its very start, chanting, “You have no authority!” as the judges entered.

עימות בתוך אולם בג”ץ שדן בהדחת ראש השב”כ בין המשפחות השכולות לראשי מערכת הביטחון לשעבר: “באתם להגן על מי שפשע ב7 באוקטובר. בושה בושה, אין לכם סמכות” pic.twitter.com/Za62TnQsLm

— חזקי ברוך (@HezkeiB) April 8, 2025

Among those disrupting the proceedings was MK Gotliv, of Netanyahu’s Likud party, who repeatedly interrupted the beginning of the session.

The firebrand lawmaker drew a reprimand from Chief Justice Amit, who told her, “You are in a courtroom, not in the Knesset, please don’t interrupt.”

Gotliv retorted that she had immunity and could not be removed from the court. She could then be seen chewing gum and fiddling with her phone in the front row of a spectator gallery.

Another interruption came from a bereaved father, Itzik Bontzel, whose son was killed in the ongoing war against Hamas.

In a lengthy speech against Bar, Bontzel denounced the court for entertaining the petitions, saying the Shin Bet chief’s hands “are dripping in blood.”

Guards pulled Bontzel out of the room. At a later point in the hearing, however, he was allowed to address the court briefly.

איציק בונצל, אבא של עמית הי”ד נגד הגנרלים בבית המשפט pic.twitter.com/095RebITNM

— ינון מגל (@YinonMagal) April 8, 2025

Amid the bereaved father’s first invective, Amit consulted with Justice Barak Erez for several minutes. Then, he announced that the judges would take a break, after which they would lay out rules for the hearing.

“No court in the world can be run like this,” he said.

Security guards cleared the courtroom, beginning a recess of about an hour.

When the court reconvened, Amit read out his decision that the hearing would be held without an audience due to the heckling, which he called “severe.”

Gotliv immediately interrupted again, prompting Amit to order her removed from the hearing. Bailiffs had to be forcibly taken out of the court.

Amit said it was “quite outrageous” that the “legislative branch is not allowing proceedings in the judicial branch.”

The court president did, however, allow attorney Yehudah Puah, a legal representative of families whose relatives were killed on October 7, 10 minutes to express the families’ opposition to the petitions.

Puah accused Bar of negligence, which he said resulted in the deaths of his clients’ children.

Government put on defensive

Throughout the trial, Amit put the government on the defensive.

He alleged that comments by Netanyahu had created concerns that the prime minister had a conflict of interest in firing Bar, citing the prime minister’s assertions that investigations against his aides were politically motivated to harm him.

“The prime minister inserted himself into this, he said the indictments ‘are against [the aides], but the purpose is to harm me, it’s a witch hunt,’” noted Amit.

The judge’s comment came in response to Netanyahu’s legal representative, attorney Zion Amir, who dismissed conflict-of-interest claims as “vacuous” and baseless.

Amir further charged that Bar’s involvement in the Qatargate investigation was itself a conflict of interest because the Shin Bet chief knew he was about to be fired.

“This cries out to the heavens,” Amir said.

The judges also appeared skeptical of the government’s position that the law grants it the authority to fire the security chief regardless of circumstance.

Amir argued that the government has “total authority” under the law to hire and fire the head of the Shin Bet. But Justice Sohlberg, a conservative, and liberal justice Barak Erez pointed out that the obligations and principles of administrative law still apply.

“This court has held since the 1960s that no [government] body has total discretion,” Barak Erez told Amir.

Sohlberg and Barak Erez pointed out that Bar was not given sufficient time to prepare for a disciplinary hearing in front of the government, nor was he presented with a concrete list of the complaints against him.

Additionally, Amit pointed out that a senior public office holder at the level of the Shin Bet chief has never before been fired by the government. Amir countered that the security situation in Israel following October 7 was also unprecedented.

Amit said he believes the attorney general’s opinion that the decision to fire Bar be brought to the advisory committee for senior appointment was “correct,” essentially piling on further procedural questions over Bar’s firing.

Sohlberg said he would have wanted to hear from Bar himself to clarify aspects of the case since “none of the eight petitioners have provided a factual infrastructure which I, as a judge, can rely on.”

Attorney Aner Helman, representing the attorney general, told the court that Bar could be there within 30 minutes to address the justices in a closed-door session if they so wished.

Watchdog head: PM wants Shin Bet to be secret police

Attorney Eliad Shraga, who heads the Movement for Quality Government in Israel, accused Netanyahu and the government of trying to turn the Shin Bet domestic security agency into “the Stasi,” the feared secret police force in Communist East Germany.

Shraga also alleged that Netanyahu is seeking to install a new head of the service who would be specifically loyal to him.

“It can’t be that the subject of an investigation can wake up one morning and fire his investigator,” said Shraga in reference to the Qatargate scandal, though it is Netanyahu’s close aides, not the prime minister himself, who are suspects in that case.

Shraga also referenced a declaration sent by Bar to the court ahead of the hearing in which Bar alleged that Netanyahu had asked him to tell the Jerusalem District Court, which is presiding over the prime minister’s ongoing corruption trial, that security concerns prevented the prime minister from testifying regularly.

The attorney also pointed to comments by Netanyahu’s representative in court about Bar’s hands-off approach to IDF service refusal during protests over the government’s judicial overhaul efforts in 2023.

“They want the Shin Bet chief to use its tools against people who ceased their voluntary service, who were protesting. Is this not the Stasi? This is what the Shin Bet needs to do, to employ invasive tools against IDF soldiers?” demanded Shraga.

Attorney Boaz Arad, representing the Movement for Integrity in Government, read off a reel of what he said were procedural violations by the government in firing Bar.

Arad said that the government had ignored instructions from the Attorney General’s Office for how to conduct the dismissal of Bar, while also failing to specifically detail what the reasons were for the government’s loss of faith in him in order to enable Bar to defend himself in a cabinet hearing.

Times of Israel staff contributed to this report.