It would be easy to get lost in the disparate chronologies and smaller sensational narrative points of the battle between Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Shin Bet Director Ronen Bar.
It would be easy to miss the big picture: that from the moment that Hamas took hostages on October 7 and Netanyahu decided that, in spite of that disaster on his watch, he would not resign and would seek reelection, he and Bar were going to be on a collision course with history.
There are a number of issues relating to the rule of law that possibly determined the final timing of their public breakup, and I analyze those issues in a separate article, but the broader October 7 and hostage issues made a clash of the titans inevitable.
Normally, the head of the Shin Bet is one of the closest advisers to the prime minister.
He not only protects the country from terrorism but is also responsible for the prime minister’s personal protection while his agents experience the premier and his family in the most up-close and personal way possible.
Literally, the Shin Bet chief and his staff are under orders to take a bullet for Netanyahu.
October 7 changed everything.
Initially, the expected position of Netanyahu would have been similar to his top defense officials and to Golda Meir after the Yom Kippur War – to resign before his term expired and to step down from seeking reelection.
Had he followed this practice, he might not have opposed the much-needed state commission of inquiry. Such a commission will not help Bar’s political legacy.
If anything, it might disappoint some of his critics by placing some responsibility on him as the architect of containing Hamas and allowing Qatar to fund the terror group, as well as for security issues caused by his judicial overhaul – but ultimately it places a lot of responsibility on the Shin Bet.
Now, when he attacks the defense establishment, it is seen as self-serving and political.
Netanyahu saw 'state inquiry as a moral political danger'
A state inquiry would probably find that many of the harsh critiques of the defense establishment are true, especially given that the IDF and Shin Bet have agreed themselves.
But once Netanyahu decided he was going to stay on and seek reelection, he started to see a state inquiry as a moral political danger.
What would happen if the public learned that the Shin Bet let Netanyahu’s military secretary know of the dangers of October 7 at 5:15 a.m., around 75 minutes before the war started?
What would happen if the public learned that the IDF spoke to Netanyahu’s intelligence officer, who then spoke to his military secretary, who decided not to wake the prime minister, also sometime before the war started?
Now the public knows, but it is 18 months later, and many have already formed opinions about October 7, for or against Netanyahu and the defense establishment.
If the public had learned this all much earlier, as it would have from a state inquiry, Netanyahu might have faced a greater political threat than he now faces when most information is lost to the average citizen in the flood of data and cross-accusations about firing or not firing Bar.
So, Netanyahu moved from the fateful decision to avoid resigning and instead blocked a state inquiry for an indefinite period of time. Likewise, once he had decided to stay on, he needed fall guys for October 7.
Putting the blame on Ronen Bar
In short, he needed to blame it on the IDF and the Shin Bet.
Once this became clear, Bar became a direct threat to Netanyahu – no matter what he did in any other area – to be forced out as soon as possible without directly undermining the primary war effort, just as former IDF chief Herzi Halevi had been a primary target.
A related profound decision Netanyahu made was to prioritize the destruction of Hamas and the continuation of the war – as opposed to trying to root out the terror group with a political replacement supported by the West and moderate Sunni allies – even above the goal of returning the hostages.
It is unclear what Netanyahu’s priorities would have been had he decided to resign.
But once he had decided to seek reelection, he needed to portray the narrative of this war as a victory over Hamas, not as a lost war from October 7, which eventually led to the release of some live hostages and some deceased ones.In contrast, it was always clear that Halevi and Bar felt personally responsible for the loss of hostages.
Given that they intended to quit, they were always going to place returning the hostages as a higher priority than finishing off Hamas, even as the two of them contributed significantly to killing 20,000 Hamas terrorists and routing its military organization in general.
This all meant that as long as there was a way that hunting down Hamas could be combined with freeing hostages, Netanyahu and Bar could smooth over their different priorities.
However, once a choice needed to be made – return more hostages by ending the war or risk their lives to maintain military pressure on Hamas – they were bound to enter a monumental conflict.
Bar and Netanyahu started fighting over the handling of hostage negotiations – with public leaks from Shin Bet chief, Halevi, Mossad Director David Barnea, and former defense minister Yoav Gallant – as early as May 2024, when the defense establishment wanted a deal but Netanyahu wanted to continue the war.
They temporarily overlapped again to achieve the interim deal of January 19, but when Netanyahu replaced Bar, Barnea, and Halevi’s representatives in February with Dermer and others to lead hostage negotiations, he clearly wanted to avoid accidentally falling into a deal that might return all or almost all of the hostages in exchange for ending the war.
Bar’s affidavit on Monday made it clear that this undermined any attempted negotiations to maintain Phase II of the deal in general and sidelined Egypt as a moderate mediator in particular.
Hamas has said it would release another 8-10 live hostages in exchange for another one-to-two-month’ ceasefire and would return the rest of the hostages if Israel agreed to end the war; Netanyahu has refused, saying Hamas would not really return all of the hostages.
If Bar were still running the negotiations, he could be undermining Netanyahu’s narrative just as he and other negotiators did with leaks in the spring and summer of 2024.
And so, while the public remains stunned by many details of Bar’s affidavit and the current broader fight between the premier and his Shin Bet chief, like a Greek tragedy, some kind of train-wreck-style ending was probably preordained for these two titans not long after October 7 altered their fates, options, and legacies.