Welcome to the Times of Israel's daily briefing. Today is Friday, March 21st, day 532 of the war.

Amanda Borsell, Dan here with our diplomatic reporter, Laser Barman, for a briefer briefing ahead of a full episode of our new Friday Focus series.

Thanks for joining me, Laser.

Good morning, Amanda. Good to be here.

In a stormy session late last night, the cabinet voted unanimously to fire Shinbet Head Ronenbar.

Already minutes after the vote, the movement for quality government in Israel said it had filed a high court

petition against the government's dismissal of Barr. It is assuredly just the first of many

petitions over this controversial cabinet move. The move marked the first time in Israeli history

that the government has fired the head of the domestic security

agency. Laser, take us through Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's motivations for Barr's

dismissal, according to what was said at last night's meeting. Well, first of all, what we have

is what the Prime Minister's office put out from the meeting in the name of Netanyahu.

And there you have Nathanielo actually saying something new about Ronan Barr, and he's had a whole series of reasons and allegations against Barr.

But this time he calls him soft.

He says he was not aggressive enough in these hostage negotiations.

Netanyahu says he met with him multiple times.

He spoke with him.

He tried to explain the fact that Barr's approach was ostensibly too soft.

And when he realized he couldn't do it, he removed him from the hostage negotiating team.

And then, this Niyahu says, since that happened, then we've seen all this movement on getting hostages out, even though that deal right now seems to have fallen apart.

But there was that period of over a month, a month and a half, where Israel was able to get dozens and dozens of hostages living and some dead out of Gaza.

Of course, what doesn't really work here is that Israel was able to get that deal before Barr and Mossad chief David Barnaya were removed from the hostage team.

...