Six former police chiefs and 40 deputy commissioners call for the dismissal of Israeli Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir

June 10 (EUROPA PRESS) –

Six former chiefs of the Israeli Police and more than 40 deputy commissioners have called on the country’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, to immediately dismiss his security minister and ultranationalist partner in his government coalition, Itamar Ben Gvir, for “representing an immediate danger and tangible to the security of the State of Israel”.

Since his arrival at the portfolio, Ben Gvir has been the subject of controversy after controversy over his far-right rhetoric and his visits to the Jerusalem Mosque Esplanade, which both the Palestinians and Jordan, the custodian country of the holy site, have described as an offense and a provocation to fuel the conflict.

As far as the Police are concerned, Ben Gvir has spent months trying to assume more direct control over police operations to the point that he tried to oust Tel Aviv Police Commander Amichai Eshed from office, accusing him of passivity in the face of the protests against the judicial reform that the Israeli government is preparing.

In fact, Eshed was removed from office but the intervention of the country’s Prosecutor’s Office managed to reverse the situation.

In the letter, collected late yesterday by the Israeli newspaper ‘Yedioth Aharonoth’, the signatories warn of the “imminent collapse of the Israel Police” and accuse the minister of being a “central part” of the problems that afflict the force.

Among them are former Police Chiefs Yohanan Danino, who served from 2011 to 2015, Dudi Cohen (2007-2011), Moshe Karadi (2004-2007), Shlomo Aharonishki (2001-2004), Asaf Hefetz (1994-1997) and Rafi Peled (1993-1994).