An Israeli panel confirmed on Thursday the nomination of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s pick for domestic security chief, his office said, capping months of legal and political wrangling.
Netanyahu named David Zini, an army major general, as his pick to lead the Shin Bet domestic security service in May, amid disputes over the premier’s bid to dismiss the agency’s former director Ronen Bar.
Israel’s attorney general, Gali Baharav Miara, had said at the time that Zini’s nomination was “illegal” after the supreme court found the move to sack Bar unlawful.
But on Thursday a committee tasked with vetting senior positions confirmed Netanyahu’s pick, clearing the way for Zini to assume the role, according to a statement from the prime minister’s office.
The committee found no “ethical issue preventing the prime minister from selecting a Shin Bet director”, according to the panel’s decision shared by Netanyahu’s office.
The prime minister had announced Zini’s selection a day after the supreme court ruled the government’s decision to fire Bar was “improper and unlawful”.
Netanyahu said in March that he was dismissing Bar because of an “ongoing lack of trust”.
That move was challenged in court by advocacy groups and Israel’s political opposition, which decried it as a sign of an anti-democratic drift on the part of Netanyahu’s right-wing coalition government.
Bar eventually stepped down in June.
Israeli media have linked the cabinet’s dismissal of Bar and attempts to fire the attorney general to their role in a Shin Bet investigation into Netanyahu aides for allegedly receiving payments from Qatar.
The scandal, dubbed “Qatargate”, raised questions about the possibility of Qatari influence in the prime minister’s office.
Netanyahu denounced the case as a “political witch hunt”.
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© Agence France-Presse
