Israel's domestic security chief says he will step down in June, defusing battle with Netanyahu

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00:00Let's go to the breaking story coming out of Israel.

00:02Ronan Barr has announced he's to resign as head of Israel's Shin Bet security service.

00:07This was a controversy where he revealed Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu

00:10ordered him to be loyal to him rather than to the state.

00:13Netanyahu is denying the allegation, but Ronan Barr has held firm.

00:16He gave notice that he's to quit at a special event

00:19to honor fallen service personnel at Shin Bet headquarters.

00:22This is now scheduled for June the 15th, his resignation.

00:26Let's bring in Noga Tarnopolsky, our correspondent in Jerusalem,

00:29for more on this one. Noga, what more can you add?

00:35Well, it really leaves Israel hanging even more than it's been hanging until now,

00:40if you can imagine that.

00:42In a way, Ronan Barr's decision to resign was completely expected.

00:47He runs an agency, a security agency, that failed completely in its task

00:52on October 7th, 23, which was to warn Israel that danger was incoming.

00:58And from the point of view of many people, including some of his supporters,

01:02he should have resigned a long time ago.

01:04But he held on because of the aberrant situation in Israel

01:08in which the entire governing coalition,

01:12the entire government that oversaw the disaster

01:14and that oversaw the policy of funding Hamas

01:18and of viewing Hamas as a partner, or to quote the finance minister,

01:22as an asset before the disaster remained in place

01:27and not only refused to resign but refused to even appoint a commission of inquiry.

01:31And so he remained as a kind of corollary to this stagnation

01:39in the political and military leadership of Israel.

01:43His resignation may burn off the government's threat

01:48made yesterday by the prime minister himself,

01:51which was that if the Supreme Court rules that his firing was illegal,

01:55as it appears to have been,

01:58yesterday the prime minister threatened simply to ignore the Supreme Court

02:03if it were to rule that way.

02:05So he may have given the government a bit of a ledge off of that threat.

02:09But honestly, I expect the next six weeks in Israel,

02:13until he leaves office, to be extremely bumpy.

02:16Does this in any way ease the pressure on Benjamin Netanyahu?

02:25Prime Minister Netanyahu yesterday presented to the Supreme Court

02:31an affidavit in response to the claims made in Ronan Barr's affidavit.

02:38Both of these are sworn oaths.

02:40And both came accompanied with a thick wad of classified documents

02:45viewed only by the justices and not by the public.

02:49But Netanyahu's statement made yesterday, his affidavit,

02:53is a very problematic one in which it appears,

02:57the more one examines this document,

02:59that he misled the court, that he misquoted protocols,

03:05that he released biased and clipped or inaccurate versions

03:11of government discussions, of cabinet discussions,

03:14in which Ronan Barr participated.

03:17So on the one hand, yes, this could remove pressure from the prime minister

03:22because now he can tell his ministers and his political base,

03:25you see, I got rid of him, he's quitting.

03:28On the other hand, Netanyahu may have entangled himself

03:30in a real accusation of contempt of court

03:34or worse, of interfering in court proceedings

03:37with this very questionable document he presented yesterday.

03:42Nogatana Polsky, Jerusalem.

03:43As always, thank you very much, Jadid,

03:45for bringing us insight and analysis.

03:47Thank you, Mark.

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