Attorney General Gali Baharav-Miara on Sunday evening submitted her response to the Supreme Court regarding petitions against Justice Minister Yariv Levin, after he ordered the locks on his Tel Aviv office changed - preventing her from accessing the premises she had used for years.
Baharav-Miara stated that since the beginning of her tenure, she continued a long-standing practice - dating back at least a decade - whereby the Attorney General and her staff used an office complex in the Tel Aviv government compound on days when the Justice Minister and the ministry's director-general were not present. This arrangement, she said, was coordinated with both offices. She personally used the minister’s office, while her staff used the adjacent offices.
"Only after the government's decision, and directly related to it, was a unilateral step taken - with no explanation - to lock the minister’s office,” she wrote.
Baharav-Miara emphasized that the move contradicts existing Supreme Court directives, particularly an order prohibiting any changes to current work arrangements. “It appears the intent was to harm the status of the Attorney General and her professional functioning,” she added.
Justice Minister Levin had earlier submitted a sharply worded response, asserting that the Tel Aviv office in question belongs solely to him. He criticized the court’s priorities, arguing that it was devoting attention to marginal procedural matters while ignoring more critical civil rights issues.
“There were days when matters at the heart of civil liberties stood at the top of the court’s agenda - but these are different times,” Levin said. He also pointed to the investigative committee on spyware, which remains inactive due to a court injunction. “While a committee investigating serious violations of civil rights is stalled, matters that are neither urgent nor significant receive immediate judicial attention.”
Levin further criticized the decision to assign an expanded panel of nine justices to the matter, calling it “one of the strangest episodes in the history of the judiciary.”