Israel's attorney general has said Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's nomination of an army major general as head of domestic intelligence is "illegal", after the supreme court found his move to sack the incumbent chief unlawful.
Netanyahu named David Zini as his pick to lead the Shin Bet last week, after months of legal and political wrangling over his attempt to dismiss the current chief Ronen Bar.
In a letter to Netanyahu obtained by AFP on Tuesday, Attorney General Gali Baharav Miara pointed to the recent "court decisions regarding the end of the Shin Bet director's mandate".
"Your decision regarding major general Zini, made in a situation of conflict of interest and contradicting the conclusions of the judgment as well as the judicial directives in force, is illegitimate and illegal," she said.
The prime minister 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 non-profit organisations 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 has since said he will step down in June.
Following the supreme court's ruling that his firing was unlawful, Baharav-Miara had said Netanyahu "must refrain from any action related to the appointment of a new head of the Shin Bet".
The prime minister, however, has insisted Zini be installed as soon as possible, calling it "a security requirement of the highest order".
He has yet to publicly respond to Baharav Miara's latest letter.
At least one NGO has threatened to file a challenge against the appointment, which still has to be approved by a vetting committee and the cabinet to be finalised.
A legal opinion submitted to the attorney general by her deputy acknowledged the need to fill the role quickly, and suggested that a legal workaround to Netanyahu's conflict of interest would be to "transfer the authority to another minister, who will present a candidate to the government".
With AFP
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