But should Attorney General Gali Baharav-Miara succeed in ousting him, she may find it a pyrrhic victory

But first, some context.

Israel’s attorney general is seeking the national security minister’s removal by invoking the “Deri Doctrine.” Established in the 1990s, this precedent arose when the High Court compelled Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin to dismiss Shas leader Aryeh Deri from his cabinet following a criminal indictment. The doctrine mandates that a prime minister is legally obligated to fire a minister if they are charged with offenses involving “moral turpitude.” The underlying rationale is that the public’s confidence in the government’s integrity is so foundational to democracy that it must override a prime minister’s executive discretion to maintain his cabinet.