The truth is that the High Court of Justice hearing regarding the legality of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and the government’s firing of Shin Bet (Israel Security Agency) Head Ronen Bar (currently frozen) in a theoretical vacuum should have no bearing at all on the future of Israeli democracy.
It’s a pretty simple case: Bar will need to go, whether it is this week, after the Passover holiday (as the High Court suggested in a late Tuesday night ruling), or in a month or so.
So why did so much of the country focus its attention on this hearing while there is an ongoing war in Gaza and while Netanyahu was on a high-stakes visit to strategize with US President Donald Trump on a list of major foreign affairs issues, including Iran?
Seemingly the answer is that it wraps so many major issues convulsing the country’s different political parties and tribes all into one big mess of law and emotion.
There is October 7.
Some Israelis have concluded that the solution to Hamas’s invasion was the resignation of top IDF officials like former chief Herzi Halevi, as well as Bar.
Other Israelis have concluded that the main solution is Netanyahu’s resignation.
Bar and Netanyahu have traded blame over the invasion, though Bar has said that no matter what, he accepts significant contributory blame. These dual visions for the future color every aspect of Israeli national security, but also the future of the state’s democracy.
Their frayed relationship also dives into the public corruption trial of Netanyahu and the judicial overhaul debate.
Netanyahu hates that he is reliant on Bar, someone he now loathes, for convincing the Jerusalem District Court that his case must remain in Tel Aviv. He wants to be in control of all of the levers and not dependent on Bar for anything, let alone critical aspects of his personal and political future.
The same is true of the judicial reform debate.
Netanyahu was already upset with Bar and Halevi in 2023 when they did not crush those in their ranks who protested his policies for remaking the judicial establishment.
In turn, Bar, Halevi, and then-defense minister Yoav Gallant were furious at Netanyahu for shaking their well-oiled defense machines to their foundations with an issue that they had no input in.
The country is also being shaken by Qatargate.
Qatargate involves allegations that officials close to Netanyahu broke the law in receiving funds from Qatar while also making policy in the PMO relating to Qatar and the Israeli hostages held by Hamas.
But as Netanyahu’s lawyers said: he is not a suspect in either of the two Qatargate cases. Also the whole government fired Bar, not just Netanyahu.
So what kind of a conflict of interest can he have to remove Bar if he is not solely personally implicated?
Here, the attorney-general’s office and some of the justices clarified that a conflict of interest does not need to mean that Netanyahu himself is suspected of a crime, only that he is pressing to fire Bar to obtain some potentially problematic interest.
For example, if the probe of his aides is valid and he wants to end it by firing Bar since he considers it a witch hunt, this could be a conflict temporarily pausing his right to fire Bar until the Qatargate probe is completed.
However, Bar has said he intends to step down sometime in May, meaning he will likely finish his role in Qatargate by then.
So what exactly is the crisis?
It certainly is not the advisory committee that Netanyahu should have consulted before firing Bar but which cannot bind him. In other words, had Netanyahu consulted the committee, he could ignore a recommendation by them to keep Bar and fire him anyway.
Some of the crisis runs into the question of how democracy can better be protected at this moment: Should an unelected official who has unique expertise and powerful law enforcement capabilities be allowed to complete a probe into his boss’s top aides over possible national security violations?
Or is the focus the idea that Bar is acting like an authoritarian and mafia-style secret police, making up rules to harass whoever he sees fit for his own agenda?
The problem with saying Bar has some massive personal agenda is he really does seem close to quitting. It would seem that the simplest compromise would be to agree on a date in May.
But Netanyahu wants to maintain that he can fire Bar, both for the political might that it will decorate him with, as well as to send a message to future agency chiefs about who is the real boss.
Enter former Shin Bet chief Yoram Cohen, who unveiled in recent days past cases in which Netanyahu allegedly tried to use the Shin Bet for his own political purposes against rivals like Naftali Bennett.
In Netanyahu’s defense, many have said Bennett was a serial cabinet leaker during the 2014 Gaza conflict.
In fairness to Bennett and other Netanyahu rivals, Netanyahu has allegedly done quite a bit of selective and pro-himself political leaking of national security matters over the years.
And then there is the human element.
These men have made it clear they both hate each other,
How can they possibly productively work together for a whole additional month or until after Passover as the High Court suggested? Won’t their hatred for each other endanger national security?
Here, Netanyahu runs into the problem – which the attorney-general and justices have repeated – that he did not fire Bar in 2023 during the judicial overhaul or after October 7, seemingly suggesting that he supported Bar at times when he now says he has lost faith in him.
All of this clearly made the justices suspicious that Netanyahu’s true motives did relate to the Qatargate probe, which preexisted his public announcement that he would fire Bar, but which did heat up right before he made the call.
Another mystery is why Bar did not show up in court on Tuesday.
Bar had sent a letter lambasting Netanyahu and the government as a kangaroo court to explain why he did not show up when they offered him a hearing to defend his staying in the job.
Netanyahu’s lawyers lashed out at Bar for saying he had the authority to decide when he would make his case to the public.
Whether Bar was right or not about skipping the cabinet hearing about firing him, it seems bizarre that he did not take advantage of the more friendly High Court arena to present his case.
He still may present his case in a future affidavit after Passover.
But if he does, the perception will still be that he was dragged into court.
Another possibility is that Bar anticipated that the court would buy him time.
And if he could get past his March 20 firing all the way to late April, maybe he could make enough progress on Qatargate to agree to a soon enough date in May that either Netanyahu or the court would accept.
Either way, the High Court clearly did not want to do anything dramatic to upset the balance of the separation of powers between it and the executive branch, so the end of this story is likely to give partial wins to all sides.
Bar will have ended up getting to stay on longer than he wanted, but Netanyahu will get to appear as having pushed Bar out the door.
What impact all of this saga will have on Israeli democracy may only be fully understood in the months and years to come.
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