Israel’s attorney-general issued a sharp rebuke to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Friday, warning him that he had broken the law by announcing that he would become more personally involved in his government’s efforts to overhaul the judiciary.

The attorney-general, Gali Baharav-Miara, said Netanyahu’s announcement on Thursday night had breached a Supreme Court ruling from earlier in the year that said the Prime Minister must avoid conflicts of interest between his professional role and private interests.

Netanyahu is currently on trial for corruption in the same judicial system that his government is trying to overhaul.

“Your statement last night,” Baharav-Miara wrote in a letter to Netanyahu on Friday, was “illegal and tainted by a conflict of interest”.

The development added a dramatic new complexity to Israel’s internal turmoil, which was set off in January when Netanyahu’s government announced plans to increase government control over who gets to be a judge and reduce the judiciary’s ability to strike down laws passed by parliament.

The statement from the attorney-general came a day after Netanyahu, addressing Israelis on prime-time television, doubled down on the divisive judicial overhaul after his coalition passed a law making it harder to remove him from office.

On Thursday, he promised to go ahead next week with plans to give the government greater control over appointments to the Supreme Court — squashing rumours that he was about to back down.

He spoke shortly after the defence minister, Yoav Gallant, met Netanyahu to warn him about the effect the turmoil has had on the military. His speech capped a day in which thousands of protesters demonstrated across Israel against the plan.

The attorney-general’s office gave no indication that she would begin legal proceedings. But at least one organisation said on Friday it planned to petition the Supreme Court to adjudicate, possibly opening yet another front between the government and the judiciary.

One of the campaign groups leading the anti-government protests, the Movement for the Quality of Government, said it would file a motion for contempt of court.

New York Times News Service