A turnaround that does not pass. Benyamin Netanyahu announced this Tuesday, April 1 on his choice, announced the day before, announced the day before, of a new director of the Shin Bet, the Israeli internal security agency, after criticism aimed at its candidate, in particular from an influential American senator. This reversal comes as the Israeli Prime Minister is engaged in an showdown with the Supreme Court, which froze the government’s decision to dismiss the current chief of the Shin Bet, and the day after the arrest of two advisers from Benyamin Netanyahu on the background of suspicions of bribes received from Qatar.
After announcing his appointment on Monday, Benyamin Netanyahu finally “thanked” the vice-admiral Eli Sharvit “for having answered the call of the duty but informed him that after further consideration, he intended to examine other candidates” for the post, according to an official statement.
The appointment of Admiral Sharvit, a former commander-in-chief of the Israeli Navy, was criticized in the United States by the Republican Senator Lindsey Graham, close to American president Donald Trump, who described him as “more than problematic”. “My advice to my Israeli friends is to change course,” Lindsey Graham wrote on X, noting that Admiral Sharvit “statements” on President Trump and his policy [ne manqueraient pas de créer] unnecessary tensions “.
On January 23, two days after Donald Trump’s return to the White House, Admiral Sharvit had published in an Israeli economic daily a tribune castigating the promotion by the American president of fossil fuels at the time of global warming.
“Not a nomination like any other”
A few hours after the announcement of his appointment at the head of the Shin Bet, Israeli media reported that Eli Sharvit would have been one of the tens of thousands of Israelis descended in the street in 2023 to oppose the attempts of the Netanyahu government to reform the legal system. According to the media, Admiral Sharvit also supported the delimitation agreement of the maritime border between Israel and Lebanon concluded in 2022 by the previous government, and against which Benyamin Netanyahu had campaigned.
“The choice of the chief of Shin Bet is not an appointment like any other. It is not a position that is announced and that we regret after 24 hours because of a few cries,” reacted on X the head of the Israeli opposition Yaïr Lapid, qualifying the turnaround of Benyamin Netanyahu “of national security damage”. “Netanyahu has demonstrated once again [que] For him political pressure is more important than the interest of the state and its security, “said Benny Gantz, another opposition figure, also on X.
The justice reform project led by the government of Benyamin Netanyahu, one of the most right that the country has known, gave rise in 2023 to one of the most important popular dispute movements in the history of Israel.
The decisions taken by the Netanyahu government at the end of March to return the head of the Shin Bet, to initiate a dismissal procedure against the country’s general prosecutor and to resume war in Gaza after almost two months of truce, relaunched the dispute against the executive, accused by the opposition of dictatorial drift. The mobilization was also fed by the vote in the parliament of a disputed law on the system of appointment of judges.
An investigation by Shin Bet against relatives of Netanyahu
The Israeli government decided on March 21 to dismiss the chief of Shin Bet, Ronen Bar, after Benyamin Netanyahu said, said he no longer had confidence in him, especially after the security fiasco of October 7, 2023, the day of the bloody attack of Hamas having launched the current war. Seizure of several appeals, the Supreme Court suspended the dismissal of Ronen Bar until April 8 to study them, and rule on the legality of this revocation, which could be canceled.
Some of these appeals denounce the fact that the head of the Israeli government would be in a conflict of interest situation by wanting to send Ronen Bar in the middle of “Qatargate”, the investigation opened by the Shin Bet around close to the Prime Minister, and in which he himself says he was heard. The police announced on Monday the arrest of Yonatan Urich and Eli Feldstein, two close advisers of Benyamin Netanyahu in the framework of this investigation, denounced as “political” by the Prime Minister.