Israeli attorney general warns against establishing arrest 'quotas' for anti-judicial overhaul protesters
Israeli Attorney General Gali Baharav-Miara’s office is reportedly warning the government against setting quotas for prosecution and arrests of anti-judicial overhaul opponents.
Netanyahu's governing coalition and the attorney general have increasingly clashed over how the Israel Police should handle the growing chaotic anti-government protests sweeping across the country. Hawkish cabinet members, including National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir, have demanded tougher police action against protesters, who frequently block highways and recently caused a disturbance at Israel’s Ben Gurion Airport.
By contrast, Baharav-Miara has embraced a more lenient approach and stressed the need to preserve freedom of expression in Israel, even at the cost of considerable disruptions in society for regular people.
Avital Sompolinsky, deputy attorney general of constitutional affairs, warned that the government “cannot set some numerical benchmark for the use of means to disperse demonstrations, for arrests, for indictments, and the like."
"A priori assumption that the law enforcement system must comply with ‘quotas’ will severely impair the value of equality before the law,” Sompolinsky added.
Several senior government officials recently blasted the attorney general’s handling of the anti-government protests, with some even demanding her resignation.
Israeli President Isaac Herzog, who has emerged as a voice of moderation in Israel's political arena, condemned the recent “unrestrained” attacks on the attorney general as crossing a red line.
“There will always be a place for criticism, that is how democracy works,” the president said, “but the unrestrained lambasting of civil servants is intolerable and unacceptable."
The attorney general responded to her critics by rhetorically asking the government whether it expected her to stop the anti-government protests.
“I hope the government is not asking me to say that it wants more aggressive enforcement to suppress the protest against it, against the professional judgment of the [police] commanders on the ground and the state prosecution,” she said.
The All Israel News Staff is a team of journalists in Israel.
