Justice Minister Yariv Levin on Wednesday evening officially began a procedure to remove Attorney-General Gali Baharav-Miara from her position.
In an 84-page document sent to all of the government’s ministers, the justice minister argued that Baharav-Miara has used her power to serve as a “long arm of the opposition” and block the government from implementing its policies. The move is extremely contentious, as the Attorney-General is an important gatekeeper whose central responsibility is to ensure that the government operates according to the law.
Levin and other ministers, including Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, made similar claims on numerous occasions since the current government’s inception in late 2022. The justice minister did not explain the timing of the decision to officially launch the procedure.
The first step in the procedure is for the government to adopt the following decision: “The government decides to express no confidence in the Attorney General, Adv. Gali Baharav-Miara, due to her inappropriate conduct and the existence of significant and prolonged disagreements between the government and the Attorney General, which create a situation that prevents effective cooperation.”
Levin published a series of letters to accompany the main 84-page document. These included a request to Government Secretary Yossi Fuchs to schedule a government meeting in order to officially adopt the decision; and two other requests, one to Fuchs and the other to Knesset Speaker MK Amir Ohana (Likud) and Knesset Constitution Committee MK Simcha Rothman (Religious Zionist Party), to appoint the government and the Knesset’s representatives in a statutory five-member committee responsible for advising the government on her removal.
What does Levin's initiative involve?
Levin’s long letter outlined numerous charges against Baharav-Miara, relating to nearly all aspects of her work.
These included accusations that she intentionally ruled many government initiatives “not legally viable,” while not doing the same for the previous government, which appointed her; that as head of the state’s law enforcement apparatus, she used “selective enforcement” on protesters who demonstrated against the government’s judicial reforms in 2023; that she harmed national security by opposing a government initiative to form a State Commission of Inquiry intended to prevent international arrest warrants for the prime minister and defense minister; that she did not meet her statutory requirement to provide the government effective legal representation in Supreme Court proceedings; and that she blocked government initiatives aimed at fighting organized crime in the Arab sector.
Levin did not address the reasoning behind many of the attorney-general’s decisions, instead claiming that her motivation was to trip up the government as much as possible. He quoted complaints by many ministers over her conduct as proof that the complaints against her had a broad consensus within the government.
In many of the cases, however, the attorney-general’s office supplied detailed legal reasonings.
For instance, it opined that many government actions were “not legally viable” since they either directly or indirectly violated Israeli law or Supreme Court rulings; opposed a State Commission of Inquiry only into alleged war crimes on the grounds that such a commission would only be effective if it investigated the October 7 Hamas massacre and the ensuing war in its entirety; and blocked initiatives connected to fighting organized crime on the grounds that they included unnecessary infringements of personal freedoms and rights.
The initiative to remove Baharav-Miara will most likely end up in the Supreme Court since Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is committed to a conflict-of-interest agreement that bars him from taking any move that could affect his ongoing criminal trial. As head of the law enforcement apparatus, the Attorney-General is the highest authority on the matter, and a more sympathetic attorney general could drop the charges against the prime minister.
An array of politicians, ministers and members of the coalition supported the move to oust the Attorney-General. These included Communications Minister Shlomo Karhi; former minister MK Itamar Ben-Gvir; Culture and Sports Minister Mickey Zohar; Transportation Minister Miri Regev; and Education Minister Yoav Kisch.
However, members of the opposition and a number of NGOs blasted the move, arguing that it was a continuation of the government’s attempts to erode Israeli democracy.
Opposition leader MK Yair Lapid said, ”Yariv Levin has decided to dismantle Israeli society during a time of war. Levin, one of the main culprits of the October 7 disaster, has learned nothing. He is harming the country, harming the rule of law, and harming the war effort. His move to dismiss the Attorney-General is criminal, violent, and unconstitutional, and we will do whatever it takes to thwart it.”
Democrats party chairman Yair Golan wrote on X that the move was an attempt to “assassinate the entire law enforcement apparatus,” and called on Israelis to take to the streets and demonstrate.
Democrats MK and former Knesset Constitution Committee chairman Gilad Kariv called the decision a “watershed moment for Israeli democracy.”
“Yariv Levin and his partners have decided to attack the rule of law in Israel, to shield the prime minister from his trial, and to exempt the ultra-Orthodox from IDF enlistment,” Kariv said, adding that the move was “political violence, anti-democratic, and anti-patriotic.”
National Unity chairman MK Benny Gantz called on Levin to “stop dismantling the nation” and pledged to fight the move with all the legal means at his disposal.
Protest groups took immediate notice to the announcement and issued rallying cries. The Movement for Quality Government in Israel said, “If so much as a hair on the attorney general’s head is harmed, the country will burn. Consider yourself warned.”