National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir’s document of directives to police to limit protests is “illegal, baseless, and cannot be followed,” Attorney-General Gali Baharav-Miara wrote in an advisory opinion on Thursday.
She called the document an “invalid act of political intervention in police work,” and the directives an “unjustified violation of the right to protest.”
According to a previous agreement reached between the attorney-general and the minister, Ben-Gvir vowed to refrain from specific interventions in police work. Baharav-Miara wrote that he has breached these understandings.
In late August, Ben-Gvir published a document outlining what he presented as the Israel Police’s new policy to limit protests. The outline includes a sweeping prohibition on blocking major roads, a limitation on protest freedoms in the immediate vicinity of public officials’ homes, and an increase in police presence at protests in general.
Penned by Deputy Attorney-General Avital Sompolinsky, the Thursday advisory opinion notes that a team headed by Deputy Attorney-General Gil Limon, along with several legal advisers to the police, the ministry, and the government, has been working to implement the dividing principles of authority between the Israel Police and the National Security Ministry.
These principles “were created to outline the realms of authority between the national security minister and the police, one of the goals of which is to create checks to prevent invalid political intervention in police conduct, including concerning protests in general, and anti-government protests in particular,” Sompolinsky wrote.
The opinion adds that what is problematic about the directives document, other than its content, is its timing: The staff had not finished establishing all the principles before Ben-Gvir put it out to the press, which effectively bypassed the team’s work.
The publication of the directives “by your hand – before it could fully undergo professional and judicial review, gives rise to strong suspicion of an attempt to exert improper influence on the work of the police,” reads the opinion. This contradicts legal precedent and the principles Ben-Gvir himself had previously agreed to.
The directives themselves present significant legal challenges, Sompolinsky added, including a massive violation of the freedoms of expression and protest, as well as unlawful intervention in operational judgment by various levels of authority within the police.
Legally, every national security minister has the authority to issue a work policy that both the ministry and the police then follow. Sompolinsky noted that this one is different from those of previous ministers, as well as those that Ben-Gvir himself has authored.
She added that the document is meant to lay out general principles that align with the law, rather than get into legal specifics, which “are not under the authority of the minister to analyze.”
The directives also leave no space for operational authority, which is blatantly necessary in the case of protests, especially in the directives Ben-Gvir specified regarding road closures. This also overpasses the jurisdiction of the chief of police.
Additionally, the directives, under the guise of general legal authority, purport to intervene in the content and goals of the protests themselves, which is contradictory to the principle of non-involvement.
“What is permitted and forbidden in protests has its roots in jurisprudence, not the minister’s personal judgement,” wrote Sompolinsky.
Ben-Gvir responded by saying that he “will not be deterred by Baharav-Miara’s despicable and unlawful methods,” adding that “she has been avoiding any discussion of the policy document I submitted for months, and then claims the document is not valid because she has yet to respond to it.”
Ben-Gvir added that the A-G “encourages anarchy and wants to see blood.”
'The public gave me the mandate, not her'
Referring to the incident on Saturday when MK Eli Dalal (Likud) was knocked down while walking through a crowd of demonstrators during an anti-government protest, Ben-Gvir added that Baharav-Miara “is not satisfied with an elderly Knesset member being thrown to the ground by a group of anarchists who act with her backing.”
“To her great regret, the public gave me the mandate, not her. She will not deter me from doing my job. The public, which is experiencing violence in the streets, does not have time to wait for Baharav-Miara,” Ben-Gvir added.