Israeli Police Commissioner Kobi Shabtai said there’s been a “breakdown of trust” in his relationship with so-called ‘National Security’ Minister Itamar Ben Gvir, with whom he has repeatedly quarreled over the past five months since the new coalition of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu took office, handing the police ministry to the far-right politician.
In an interview with Channel 12 news Wednesday, Shabtai spoke candidly of tough moments in the past few months and disclosed that he had thought about resigning as police commissioner over Ben Gvir’s interventions in police matters.
Since taking office, Ben Gvir has sought to exercise more direct control over police operations and personnel, including a botched attempt to remove Tel Aviv District Police Commander Amichai Eshed from his post in March.
In the interview, an excerpt of which was posted on Wednesday ahead of the full broadcast Thursday, Shabtai said his working relationship with Ben Gvir was “not simple” following an incident last month in which the far-right minister appeared to have leaked a private conversation to embarrass the police chief, The Time of Israel reported.
In early April, a transcript of a phone conversation between Ben Gvir and Shabtai leaked in which the top cop said it was part of the “nature” and “mentality” of the Palestinians in the occupied territories – referred to by the occupation authorities as “Arab Israelis” – to kill each other, amid a surging crime wave that has claimed the lives of dozens of members of them since the beginning of the year.
The comments were made during a conversation that the two men were having about a so-called national guard unit that Ben Gvir is seeking to establish, ostensibly in part to combat record-high crime rates in Arab communities.
Ben Gvir and Shabtai had already been feuding intensely for days over the national guard, with the police commissioner warning against placing the nascent force under the authority of the far-right minister. The decision to leak damning contents of their private conversation appeared to bring ties between the minister in charge of the police and the commissioner to a new low.
Source: Israeli media
