Despite the opposition of various Israeli security organizations and the attorney general and legal adviser to the Government, Gali Baharav-Miara, Benjamin Netanyahu’s executive has approved the creation of a commission to investigate the alleged illegal police use of cyber-espionage systems in Israel.
The Pegasus Commission – named by the local media – refers to the sophisticated cybernetic instrument created by the Herzliya-based company NSO to penetrate and control mobile phones without their owners knowing they are being spied on and followed. As of 2021 and before it was the subject of controversy in Israel, Pegasus has been widely cited – and not in a positive way – internationally. Official complaints and journalistic information pointed to the illegal use of Israeli software in various countries, including Spain, to enter mobile phones in a follow-up that would go beyond the two objectives established in the contracts signed between NSO and client States, such as the fight against terrorism and organized crime.
The Israeli commission, promoted by Justice Minister Yariv Levin, will investigate the behavior of the Police, the Prosecutor’s Office, the Government’s Legal Department and the internal police investigation department in everything related to the purchase, monitoring and collection of information from technological instruments on citizens and positions in Israel. The investigation may also cover cases such as that of the prime minister who, after being charged in 2019 for three corruption cases, is being tried by the Jerusalem district court.
On January 18, 2022, the economic daily Calcalist revealed that the Israeli Police turned to Pegasus and did not request judicial permission to spy on citizens in their country. Six months later, a Justice Ministry commission found some irregularities committed by the Police but discredited the vast majority of Calcalist’s accusations that referred to espionage, for example, of officials, mayors, businessmen, protesters and even Netanyahu’s son.
In recent days, Baharav-Miara had warned the government of the damage that the new commission could cause to national security and warned that Netanyahu could incur a clear conflict of interest. In this sense, the opposition accuses Levin of creating the commission with the aim of further damaging public confidence in agents, prosecutors and judges and, above all, influencing the prime minister’s judicial process after alleging alleged illegal wiretapping in his environment. . Investigating the police investigation, a public demand by Netanyahu after his indictment, could influence his trial, the opposition warns. And they remember that the former judge chosen to chair the commission, Moshe Drori, has been very critical of the Prosecutor’s Office and the form of the judicial process against Netanyahu. “No evidence presented in the Netanyahu trial was obtained by Pegasus,” says Channel 12 legal commentator Guy Peleg.
Baharav-Miara fears that the new commission could “obstruct judicial proceedings” in open cases such as the prime minister’s and “harm the independence of the work of law enforcement bodies.” As he recalls, “the management of criminal proceedings is entrusted to the law and there is a clear institutional separation between the ministerial responsibility of the Minister of Justice and the investigation and prosecution bodies.”
Precisely because of these accusations and above all to comply with the agreement he signed to guarantee that he does not commit a crime of conflict of interest between his trial and his position as head of government, Netanyahu has not participated in the vote on the creation of the commission. At the time of the vote held this Sunday in the weekly council of ministers, he left the meeting room in Jerusalem. To the accusations of conflict of interest, Levin replied this Sunday that the one who is in this situation is the Prosecutor’s Office itself because he opposes a commission that should investigate him.
Police sources, for their part, warned that the creation of the commission “will cause a wave of dismissals in the cybernetic unit.” “This is a very hard blow precisely when the Police need all possible technological means at very difficult times in the fight against organized crime and delinquency in the Arab sector of the country,” said sources add, alluding to the bloody scourge in the Israeli Arab society that suffers a worrying increase in victims: 156 in the last eight months when in all of 2022 the figure reached 111.
The internal security service (Shabak) and the National Security Council also expressed their opposition, fearing that the commission’s work would lead to the “revealing of operational secrets.” The Government replies that the commission is necessary to find out if the police and prosecutors strictly complied with the law and did not violate the rights of citizens when using advanced technological systems in the investigations.
“We strongly oppose the illegal and improper use of our products. Pegasus aims to make a decisive contribution to the fight against terrorists and criminals,” NSO sources told us after the controversy that arose last year in Spain.
Levin’s initiative is also part of the monumental crisis in Israel as a result of the judicial reform plan that he himself announced in January and in his famous fight against what he considers “excessive power” of the judicial establishment and especially the Supreme Court (TS ).
The highest Israeli judicial authority will meet on September 12 to discuss the appeals filed against the only law approved to date of Levin’s project that consisted of annulling the reasonableness criterion – one of the most important of the Supreme Court – to intervene in decisions of the government.
The clash between Levin and Baharav-Miara is the umpteenth public confrontation between the two and constitutes one more battle in the open war between the judicial establishment, supported by the protesters who are staging 34 consecutive weeks of protests, and the ultra-conservative coalition, supported by a majority of 64 of 120 deputies in the Knesset that gave him power at the end of last December after the elections on November 1.
