Coalition leaders on Tuesday called on Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu not to comply with a potential High Court of Justice ruling to fire National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir, ahead of a hearing on Thursday on the petitions seeking his dismissal.

In a letter addressed to Netanyahu, Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar, coalition whip MK Ofir Katz, and Ben Gvir himself urged the premier to “strongly reject” the legal efforts to have him removed from office, which they called “an attempted coup against democracy.”

“No legal authority, including the High Court of Justice, has the power to force the dismissal of a government minister, especially when no indictment has even been filed against him,” they wrote.

“We will stand as a bulwark against the baseless dismissal of a government minister,” they added, arguing that “only the people elect the government, and only the people will decide at the ballot box who their representatives are.”

The letter came hours after Ben Gvir himself asked the High Court to reject the petitions seeking his ouster, two weeks after the attorney general demanded the government justify not having fired him.

In a 55-page response filed to the court, Ben Gvir denied that he is improperly intervening in police business, and asserted that the court has no standing to weigh in on his appointment.

“We cannot accept a situation in which the tenure of ministers becomes a ‘legal question’ simply due to the dissatisfaction of petitioners, or of the attorney general, with their actions,” Ben Gvir’s attorney wrote in the court filing.

He went on to slam Attorney General Gali Baharav-Miara, who has expressed support for his dismissal, writing that she “does not have a single example of any actual interference by the minister in investigations, of corruption of the appointments process, of issuing operational directives to the police, or of issuing unlawful instructions in the area of demonstrations.”

In her own filing to the court at the beginning of the month, Baharav-Miara detailed a list of allegations against Ben Gvir and his behavior toward the police force.

The minister further attacked........

© The Times of Israel