On Wednesday night, Justice Minister Yariv Levin initiated an unprecedented move in seeking to fire Attorney-General Gali Baharav-Miara.
Why? And who is Baharav-Miara?
The Jerusalem Post has spoken to a variety of top sources close to the key players over the years and, more recently, on both sides of the issue to try to paint a picture.
Before her appointment as attorney-general in February 2022 (if she is not fired, her term would run until February 2028), the last time an attorney-general resigned early was Roni Bar-On in 1997, who resigned two days after being appointed when news broke that – though he was not qualified for the role – he had been appointed in a deal between Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Shas party leader Arye Deri to try to help Deri get off of bribery charges.
Deri was eventually sent to prison and was out of politics for a decade. The current process in which the political echelon has limited influence over the attorney-general appointment came out of that scandal.
Baharav-Miara was a private-sector lawyer at Tadmor-Levy & Co. for six years before her appointment by then-justice minister and now-Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar as part of the government of prime minister Naftali Bennett.
Before her private sector years, she worked for over three decades in the Justice Ministry, including from 2006-2015 heading the more than-200-person Tel Aviv Civil Division – the largest civil division in the country.
During that time, she handled the full range of civil issues from labor disputes to land issues to defending against West Bank Palestinian civil lawsuits against the State of Israel.
But Sa’ar hired her because she had spent six years away from the public service legal establishment and that some of this time away had increased her readiness to break with that establishment, including that she was ready for his idea of splitting of the powers of the attorney-general into a separate chief legal adviser and separate chief prosecutor.
Sa’ar’s change never got off the ground because of his coalition partners, but Baharav-Miara would have supported it, despite criticism from many in the political Center and on the Left.
There were some other little-known reasons Sa’ar picked her over some other officials who were considered closer to the center of the public service legal establishment.
During her army service, from 1978 to 1980, she served in IDF intelligence.
She then married Zion Miara, who has been a member of the security establishment, in the past served for decades as a fighter in Shin Bet (Israel Security Agency) operations, and now has ALS.
Reading between the lines, Sa’ar knew that Baharav-Miara was not a left-winger and was a woman who was comfortable with the defense and intelligence establishments.
So if she came into office as a center-right figure, why is she now close to being fired?
She won't resign
First of all, the government has been trying to convince her to resign, at first more privately, and then by lashing out at her repeatedly publicly.
She has made it clear that her will to stay in office is as hard as iron, and she will fight any attempt to fire her to the end.
At a certain point, she concluded that certain moves by the current government undermine the essence of the country’s rule of law and that she must defend against these moves, even if, as she sees it, she tries hard to implement government policy 90% or more of the time in all other areas.
What got the government so mad at her to try to push her out?
Netanyahu trial
The largest issue by far is the Netanyahu trial.
This is ironic because, though people may have forgotten, Baharav-Miara did not indict Netanyahu and was not in office for the first two years of the trial.
Netanyahu was indicted by his former close cabinet-secretary, whom he appointed as attorney-general, center-right figure Avichai Mandelblit.
So, why blame her?
The prime minister’s narrative on this is that even if she is not to “blame” for the case itself, she is the one to blame for forcing Netanyahu to testify multiple times a week starting on December 10.
According to Netanyahu, she could have paused the trial for months, given the ongoing national security crisis, or at least have agreed to have him testify only once per week as opposed to multiple times per week.
From Netanyahu’s perspective, her refusal to budge one iota on this could be disqualifying in and of itself.
Baharav-Miara’s view is that she, the prosecution, and the court gave Netanyahu several extensions on his testimony due to the war, eventually adding up to five months from July 2024.
Next, she would say that he promised to be able to both run the country and manage his trial when he was indicted, despite heavy pressure from the legal establishment to resign as other ministers do upon indictment, and as former prime minister Ehud Olmert did even prior to being indicted.
She would say that if now he finds he cannot do both, he should resign and focus on his trial.
Baharav-Miara would less get into a security analysis, but some Netanyahu critics would point out that since December 10, there has been almost no active war going on given that the Hezbollah ceasefire kicked in on November 27 and aggressive IDF operations in Gaza were very reduced by then leading into the January 19 ceasefire.
Netanyahu would respond that his first three months of testimony have exposed gaping weaknesses in the prosecution’s case and that if they will not drop the case, the least they could do is pause until the hostages are returned and the question of what will happen to Hamas in Gaza is resolved.
Also, the prime minister views Baharav-Miara as blameworthy for not negotiating a plea deal.
Already in January 2022, Netanyahu was ready for a plea deal in which he would admit to minor crimes, like breach of trust, provided he would be allowed to remain in office and not incur jail time.
The court itself eventually suggested to the prosecution to engage in mediation to reach a deal and to drop certain charges, and Baharav-Miara’s critics blame her for not pursuing this option.
She would respond that mediation is a slow process designed simply to delay the trial and that if Netanyahu is interested in a deal, his lawyers can walk in the front door to her office.
Integrating haredim into the IDF
Next, the government wants to fire her because it believes she has been an activist in trying to get the coalition to fall by constantly pressing the issue of haredim (Ultra-Orthodox) integrating into the IDF even beyond the requirements issued by the High Court.
Baharav-Miara’s view is that she tried hard before the war to assist the government by offering to defend them for a full year delay on the issue of integration before the High Court of Justice, on condition that they commit to a true and real substantive change toward integrating haredim into the IDF.
This offer was ignored.
Her biggest problem with the bill being pushed by Defense Minister Israel Katz – a bill that former defense minister Yoav Gallant never would have approved and would have said was too slow and too weak for integrating haredim – is that the institutional and personal sanctions regime do not add up.
Baharav-Miara would say that they are a smokescreen since it is illegal and unworkable to sanction, arrest, or freeze the driver’s license of an individual because an institution they are part of did not meet a quota.
As long as the new Katz-sponsored bill puts the obligation only on institutions and not also on individuals, then regardless of what it says about sanctions, the attorney-general’s thinking is that nothing will come of it.
In contrast, Netanyahu and Katz argue that Baharav-Miara and their other critics have their heads in the clouds and ignore the fact that only 177 out of 10,000 haredim who were summoned by the most recent IDF waves of summons were actually drafted.
They argue that a compromise must be struck with the haredim even if it is far from perfect as without haredi buy-in, nothing will change.
In response, the attorney-general’s side would be that years have been lost trying to reach a compromise with the haredim and that in the post-October 7 world, the law must reign.
Accordingly, she is trying to block the government from workarounds to send funds to the haredim through indirect means, which they can later untraceably filter down to their yeshivot and families whose subsidies have been frozen by the High Court of Justice, partially in April 2024 and more fully at the start of this week.
Moreover, she believes that the existing sanctions under the existing law, which prevent the list of haredi evaders from leaving the country, are having an impact on the issue, even if only gradually.
Finally, she thinks that the seven-year time period for Katz’s bill is a recipe for killing the issue, given that anything that is delayed a couple years, let alone more than a full Knesset term of four years, is not taken seriously.
Interestingly, she is less worried about the defense minister having discretion about when or whether to activate the sanctions in Katz’s bill, something that supporters of full haredi integration into the IDF have been concerned about in the past.
Gideon Sa'ar war and compromise
Although the above two issues are the most important reasons that Netanyahu and the government want Baharav-Miara out, the largest practical reason that the process is finally going forward now, though it was blocked in the past, is probably the complete breakdown in the relationship between her and Sa’ar.
In early February, Baharav-Miara continued her push for a state inquiry at a cabinet meeting, eventually leading to a yelling match between her and Sa’ar.
In political terms, this was a potentially fatal move for Baharav-Miara.
As long as Netanyahu and coalition figures like Itamar Ben-Gvir, both of whom are either on trial or have top aides being probed for criminality, were leading the way for her firing, much of the political Center would view such a move as a radical and corrupt power grab.
But Sa’ar has now gone public with his view that Baharav-Miara’s views now tie too closely in with the opposition.
And Sa’ar is not only the figure who appointed her, but is viewed as non-corrupt, substantive, and a moderate even by many in the Center.
In fact, Sa’ar angered Netanyahu recently when he and his party members walked out of a speech by Netanyahu in protest of the reasons the prime minister presented for delaying a state inquiry.
Unlike others in the coalition, Sa’ar has complex views on a state inquiry and is not categorically opposed.
How did Baharav-Miara lose Sa’ar?
On January 9, Sa’ar and Levin announced a potential historic compromise on all judicial overhaul issues.
Baharav-Miara, like much of the legal establishment, views the compromise as too problematic to be useful, arguing that it deeply politicizes the judiciary.
Sa’ar’s argument was not that she was entirely wrong. Rather, given the circumstances in which around half of the country is deeply disenchanted with the legal establishment, his success in getting the coalition to agree to further empower the opposition in judicial selection issues evened out the downsides of such a compromise.
In other words, Sa’ar said there are two ways to ensure that the executive branch does not run roughshod over the judiciary. One is the current system where the judiciary is more insulated from the executive branch. Another way is by granting more power to the opposition, such that the executive branch must negotiate with them.
Shin Bet, Ben Gvir, helping the gov't where possible
There are many other issues as well.
Netanyahu wants to fire Shin Bet Director Ronen Bar. He knows that Baharav-Miara will declare this illegal, given that Bar is probing some of Netanyahu’s staff for their connections with Qatar.
If he fires the attorney-general, it may be much easier for him to also fire Bar.
Regarding Ben-Gvir, the prosecution under Baharav-Miara has gone forward with a criminal probe against West Bank police commander Moshe Finchi, top Ben-Gvir aide Chanamel Dorfman, and West Bank deputy chief for complex cases Avishai Mualem.
The allegations are that they worked together to either cover up cases in which Jewish extremists committed crimes against Palestinians or otherwise sought to interfere in such cases, including leaking or mishandling classified Shin Bet intelligence.
Ben-Gvir and other coalition members have called this a witch hunt and an attempt to frustrate Ben-Gvir’s policies of seeking to resolve Jewish extremist incidents through dialogue or other non-criminal means.
The Shin Bet has taken Baharav-Miara’s side and accused Ben-Gvir of creating unprecedented problems with the police prosecuting Jewish extremist violence.
Baharav-Miara views this latest case as simply the foreseeable result of the government’s changing of the law relating to the police and its supervising minister, granting the minister new authorities not just in appointments but also in policy.
Until the change in the police law, which she fought hard against and the High Court criticized but allowed through, she believed that the police played an apolitical, solely professional role.
Since that change, she thinks that Ben-Gvir polluted aspects of the police with politics, which inevitably led to the current criminal probe.
In a related development, she refused to reach a deal with the government regarding changes to the law for police searches and seizures even though she agreed with most of the changes to the law because the government wanted to exempt bribery cases from the searches.
In other words, her view was that exempting bribery cases from such police searches would undermine the basic rule of law and pave the way to wider corruption.
Advocates of leaving bribery out of the law believe the police have taken on too many political cases and abused certain search powers.
Finally, Baharav-Miara would note that out of hundreds of regulations and bills by the Netanyahu government, she has only sought to block a tiny percentage.
She would add that this is not discriminatory against the right wing, as she did also occasionally block bills by the Bennett-Lapid government, which preceded the current one.
Also, Baharav-Miara’s view is that she bent over backwards to help the government pass three different budgets, some of which tried to do unusual and tricky legal moves (noting that Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich publicly and repeatedly thanked her for this) and facilitated basically every government war policy, despite many of them being controversial.
Will she be fired?
It is hard to say whether she will be fired.
Part of the process being lined up is for a legal experts committee to confirm her firing, and it may be hard to find enough prominent legal experts who will not themselves be seen as overly political and who would agree to fire her.
Even if that goes through, the High Court could block the firing on a variety of grounds, including that Netanyahu is on trial for corruption, and her firing could be used to freeze his trial based on political considerations.
But the government may be more ready for this scenario than in the past.
Levin and other government officials have boycotted new Supreme Court Chief Justice Isaac Amit since he recently entered office.
Might they try to use that boycott to justify ignoring the High Court?
If people thought the war ended the crisis over the legal establishment, they were wrong.