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Ronen Bar, the head of Shin Bet, on May 13, 2024 [Gil Cohen-Magen/Pool via Reuters]

 The head of Israel’s internal security service, the Shin Bet, has reportedly resisted pressure to increase surveillance on the growing protest movement against Netanyahu’s government in Israel.

In a report in Israel’s Haaretz newspaper, a government official is quoted as saying that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and the country’s far-right National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir have expressed expectations that the Shin Bet will “use its tools against parts of the protest [movement]”.

“They want to turn it into a thought police,” the unnamed official is quoted as saying.

However, at a meeting some weeks ago with Ben-Gvir and other senior officials, the Shin Bet director Ronen Bar said his agency would “not become a secret police”, the newspaper reports.

“The Shin Bet also does security vetting for senior public figures, meaning it has access to sensitive, intimate information about them that should be inaccessible to politicians. One can only imagine what would happen if the Shin Bet were headed by someone who is serving a government, fighting tooth and nail to survive,” Haaretz added.