Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu may be the last — and most senior — of the country’s leaders tied to the failure to anticipate the Oct. 7, 2023, attacks to remain in office, after he took the first step on Sunday toward firing Shin Bet head Ronen Bar.

Netanyahu fired former Defense Minister Yoav Gallant in November; IDF Chief of Staff Lt.-Gen. Herzi Halevi resigned in January, as did IDF intelligence chief Maj.-Gen. Aharon Haliva and the head of its Southern Command, Maj.-Gen. Yaron Finkelman. David Barnea remains head of the Mossad, but his agency is less directly tied to Oct. 7 as its mandate is countering threats from abroad.

Within days of the Oct. 7 attacks, Bar took responsibility for the failure of the Shin Bet, which gathers intelligence on the Palestinians, among others, to detect the impending onslaught. 

In a lengthy statement after his dismissal, Bar said that he would remain in the job “in light of … a real possibility of returning to combat in the Gaza Strip, in which the Shin Bet has a central role,” as well as the responsibility to bring back the hostages from Gaza, to complete “a number of sensitive investigations,” and recommend his replacement. 

“I informed the prime minister that I intended to complete the above before I resigned from my position in coordination with him, in light of my responsibility to the public, the security of the country, and the functioning of the Shin Bet for the benefit of the State of Israel,” Bar said.

Bar later clarified that he would leave if the cabinet voted to dismiss him.

Netanyahu said that he will bring Bar’s termination to a cabinet vote on Wednesday “due to continuing lack of trust” in the intelligence chief. The process may take longer, however, because Israeli Attorney-General Gali Baharav-Miara — whom Netanyahu’s government is also trying to sack — said that the cabinet must wait for her to assess the legality of the move, and because it is likely to face challenges in the High Court of Justice on the grounds that the dismissal does not have a defensible legal basis.

In a video statement on Sunday, Netanyahu said that “at all times, but especially in an existential war such as this one, there must be full trust between the prime minister and the head of the Shin Bet, but unfortunately … I have longstanding distrust in the head of the Shin Bet.”

Netanyahu and Bar have several longstanding disputes. 

The Shin Bet is investigating a spokesperson for the prime minister as well as two other outside advisers for working as public relations consultants for Hamas sponsor Qatar. The probe, which has become known in Israel as “Qatar-gate,” is reportedly one of the sensitive investigations Bar wants to complete before leaving the Shin Bet.

Netanyahu supporters argue that Bar is particularly to blame for the defense establishment’s failures on Oct. 7, because he did not inform the prime minister of intelligence that indicated Hamas was preparing to attack.

The Shin Bet released an internal investigation on the matter earlier this month, parts of which were released to the public. The report said that the agency obtained Hamas plans for Oct. 7-style attacks in 2018 and 2022, as well as other signs in the months preceding the onslaught, but did not view them as an immediate threat. In the hours before the attack on Oct. 7, the Shin Bet saw Hamas preparing for something, including activating cell phones, but did not take action, though the agency sent a message that “it could point to Hamas offensive activity.” At 4:30 a.m., two hours ahead of the attack, the Shin Bet sent a team to the Gaza border region to counter an infiltration attempt, but it was not large enough to stop the thousands of terrorists invading Israel. The intelligence agency also noted a lack of preparedness by the IDF and failings of Israeli government policy in its report.

In Sunday’s statement, Bar said that the Shin Bet report “pointed to a policy by the government, and the person who headed it, for years, with an emphasis on the year before the massacre. The investigation showed a longstanding and deliberate disregard for the agency’s warnings by the political level.”

Defending Netanyahu, a diplomatic source accused Bar of “deciding on the night of Oct. 7 who not to wake up and who not to call” and “repeat[ing] the lie that he warned the political level against the Hamas attack, while the protocols prove the exact opposite. On Oct. 1, 2023, seven days before the massacre, the head of the Shin Bet said that Hamas was deterred and that it should be given economic benefits to keep the calm.” 

Bar is “clinging” to his job in a way that “harms the Shin Bet and the security of the country,” the source said.

“If anyone had any doubts about the necessity of removing the Shin Bet chief from his job, they now got the final answer to that with the anti-democratic response in which he says that he, and not the government, will decide when he ends his position,” the source stated.

Bar also said in his statement that Netanyahu has an “expectation of a duty of personal trust, the purpose of which contradicts the public interest, [and] is a fundamentally illegitimate expectation … that goes against the patriotic values that guide the Shin Bet and its members.”

The Shin Bet leader called for the government and the prime minister to undergo an investigation into their failings on Oct. 7, something that Netanyahu has thus far refused to do, citing the ongoing war in Gaza and arguing that any committee appointed by Supreme Court President Yitzhak Amit — as a state commission of inquiry would require — would be biased against him in light of the tensions between the government and the judiciary.

Bar — along with other Israeli security chiefs — disagreed with the prime minister’s approach to hostage negotiations, seeking to make concessions in the war effort to get more hostages out of Gaza sooner. Netanyahu recently removed Bar and Barnea, the Mossad chief, from leading the talks, replacing them with his close confidante, Strategic Affairs Minister Ron Dermer.

Opposition leader Yair Lapid’s party Yesh Atid announced that it would petition the High Court against Bar’s dismissal.

Lapid said that Netanyahu “is firing Ronen Bar for only one reason: The Qatar-gate investigation. For a year and a half, he didn’t see a reason to fire him, but when there is an investigation of Qatar’s penetration into Netanyahu’s office and the money sent to his closest aides, suddenly it is urgent to fire him right away.” 

“Bar said many times that he will resign from his job and take responsibility for his part in the disaster of Oct. 7 after the hostages are brought back home,” Lapid added. “He is the senior professional in the negotiations and firing him now is irresponsible and [shows] a lack of commitment to the hostages’ fate.” 

Also Sunday, Haaretz reported that the Shin Bet was investigating a Prime Minister’s Office employee for leaking Netanyahu’s location to a leader of the protests against him.

Former Shin Bet chief Nadav Argaman is under investigation for saying in an interview that he would “put to use” secrets he knows about Netanyahu, if the prime minister breaks the law. Bar criticized his predecessor for “us[ing] the organization’s power unnecessarily.”