Israel’s supreme court on Tuesday gave the cabinet and attorney general’s office a deadline to find a solution to the government’s hotly-contested decision to sack domestic security chief Ronen Bar.Following an hours-long hearing which was briefly interrupted with protests from government supporters and critics, Supreme Court President Yitzhak Amit told the two sides to find a compromise.”Since we saw some sparks of willingness here… we are giving you until after Passover (which ends on April 19) to try to reach some kind of creative solution that is agreed upon” by both sides, Amit said.In its ruling, the supreme court said Bar “will continue to perform his duties until a later decision”.”No steps should be taken to terminate the mandate of the head of the Shin Bet, including the appointment of a replacement or an interim,” the court said.”However, there is nothing to prevent interviews with candidates for the post, without announcing an appointment”.Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced last month that his government had unanimously approved a motion to dismiss the head of the Shin Bet internal security agency, citing “lack of trust” and requiring Bar to leave his post by April 10.The hearing on Tuesday followed petitions filed by opposition parties and non-profit groups, challenging the legality of the government’s move which the Supreme Court had already frozen until it issues a ruling.Protests were held outside the Jerusalem courtroom, and inside, shouts and interruptions forced the judges to halt proceedings after only 30 minutes.”No court in the world is run this way,” Amit said after warning government supporters and critics who interrupted the hearing, which was broadcast live.Amit called for a recess, during which scuffles between the sides continued outside the courtroom.The hearing resumed about an hour later, with no audience, “to allow the right to argue without fear for all parties involved”, according to the judges.Attorney Zion Amir, representing the government, said that “this is purely a political petition”.Bar has pushed back against the government’s move to sack him, dismissing Netanyahu’s arguments as “general, unsubstantiated accusations” motivated by “personal interest”.Bar said the decision was meant to “prevent investigations into the events leading up to October 7 and other serious matters” being looked at by the Shin Bet, referring to the 2023 Hamas attack on Israel.- ‘Anti-democracy’ -Attorney General Gali Baharav-Miara has also cautioned that ousting Bar was “tainted by a personal conflict of interest on the part of the prime minister due to the criminal investigations involving his associates”.Baharav-Miara was referring to a case, dubbed “Qatargate” by Israeli media, involving Netanyahu’s close advisers under investigation for allegedly receiving money from the Gulf emirate which has long hosted the political office of Hamas.Tomer Naor, from the Movement for Quality Government in Israel which submitted one of the petitions, told AFP that “Netanyahu is under a severe conflict of interest”.Dov Halbertal, a lawyer who came to watch the hearing, said that “Netanyahu is the ruler, he can fire whoever he wants, especially this Ronen Bar, the head of the Shin Bet that is responsible for the massacre” of October 7, 2023.The fact that the court was hearing the petitions was “anti-democracy”, he said.Baharav-Miara, who has often clashed with the Netanyahu administration over the independence of the judiciary, said that firing Bar could lead to the politicisation of the powerful position.Appointed Shin Bet chief in October 2021 by the previous government, led by opponents of Netanyahu, Bar has clashed with the long-serving incumbent since his return to power in late 2022.Bar was critical of a government proposal to reform the judiciary, which drew hundreds of thousands of Israelis onto the streets in protest and was temporarily shelved when the Gaza war began with Hamas’s attack.Bar, who was meant to end his tenure next year, had suggested he would consider stepping down early due to his part in failing to prevent the October 7 attack, but only once the war ended and the hostages held in Gaza were freed.

Fear, bombs and screams stalk Palestinians in the Gaza Strip, where Israel’s resumption of strikes three weeks ago has sparked fresh displacement and an ever more desperate search for shelter. “They are asking for evacuation, but where will we go?” asked Mahmoud Hussein, who fled bombardments in the north to live in a tent in the central town of az-Zawayda. “There is nothing, nothing,” he said, listing off several nearby areas marked for evacuation on a map published by the Israeli army.Since its renewed strikes and ground operations, the Israeli army has issued a raft of evacuation orders for locations in the north, south and centre of the Gaza Strip, warning residents of imminent attacks. Nearly 400,000 Gazans have been displaced since March 18, the UN said Monday. Israel struck Deir el-Balah overnight from Sunday to Monday, Gaza’s civil defence agency said, and Hussein along with the other inhabitants of his makeshift tent encampment fled to a nearby field hospital. On Monday morning, the group began packing up their things once again, in search of an area away from the evacuation zones. Adults filled fraying plastic bags with the few belongings they had left, while children milled around nearby. Donkey carts laden with mattresses trundled along the dusty road, while women carried baskets on their heads.It is now a familiar scene in Gaza, where almost all of the 2.4 million inhabitants have fled their homes, many of them multiple times, according to the United Nations.  – ‘No glimmer of hope’ -Israel resumed intense strikes on the Gaza Strip on March 18, ending a two-month ceasefire with Hamas. Efforts to restore the truce have so far failed. The health ministry in the Hamas-run territory said Tuesday that at least 1,449 Palestinians have been killed in the renewed Israeli operations, taking the overall death toll since the start of the war to 50,810. The war was triggered by Hamas’s October 7, 2023 attack on Israel which resulted in the deaths of 1,218 people, according to an AFP tally based on official Israeli figures.In Deir el-Balah, an overnight Israeli air strike targeted a house, killing nine people including five children, Gaza’s civil defence agency said.  In the aftermath, AFPTV footage showed a plastic chair, blankets and a bright red children’s bathtub trapped between two collapsed floors of a house. Palestinians desperately scrambled through the rubble to retrieve a body, which was carried down the stairs in a blanket and loaded on the back of a truck. “We rushed out in terror, not even knowing at first where the strike had hit,” said Abed Sabah, a relative of the targeted house’s owner.”It was the thick cloud of dust that told us it was nearby.” Sabah said they had managed to pull out 11 bodies, “most of them children and women.”A young girl sat in the midst of a sea of rubble and metal rods, surrounded by rolls of toilet paper, blankets and a battered foam mattress.At the nearby Al-Aqsa Martyrs hospital, bodies arrived in white plastic shrouds. Relatives cried and recited prayers over the blood-stained body bags laid out on the floor. An elderly woman hobbled through the crowd of mourners, struggling to hold back sobs.   “The house was full of displaced people and children. Four children were decapitated -— what was their fault?” asked Nadeen Sabah, weeping as she spoke.  Sabah claimed to have been in the building at the time of the attack.Amal Jabbal, 35, said she had left Deir el-Balah on Monday after being woken up by “the screams of the neighbourhood”.  She said she left before a strike “that shook the whole area”.”The destruction was massive and the fear even greater,” she said. “There is no glimmer of hope.”