Senior police: South commander Bar-Lev's firing was payback from boss

When David Cohen was first appointed police commissioner, about 18 months ago, there were widespread talk about the tension between him and Uri Bar-Lev, then commander of the police's Southern District. Cohen, according to the rumor mill, was never one of Bar-Lev's admirers, and would not bend over backward to promote him. Indeed, there were some who claimed that Cohen was gunning for Bar-Lev from the start, since the charismatic district commander, a darling of the media, often overshadowed his boss. Those predictions came true last month, when Cohen decided to oust Bar-Lev from the force - a decision that is now awaiting approval from Public Security Minister Avi Dichter.

One of the major points of friction between the two, according to a police source, was that Bar-Lev replaced Cohen at the head of the Southern District just four months before the disengagement from Gaza, and therefore reaped all the praise for its successful implementation. In addition, when Cohen became police commissioner, he declared war on leaks from internal police meetings, and Bar-Lev, due to his close connections with journalists, was a prime suspect.

Shortly after Cohen became commissioner, for instance, the media reported on the contents of a meeting of senior police staff. Since most of the published quotes were taken from Bar-Lev's critical comments at the meeting, Cohen was convinced that he was the leaker. Later, however, two other officers confessed to having been the ones who spoke with journalists.

This past March, the issue arose again after Haaretz quoted an unnamed police officer as having criticized the force's handling of the terror attack on Jerusalem's Merkaz Harav Yeshiva. Cohen was furious, and launched an investigation that even included examining senior officers' phone logs and making them take polygraph tests. Here, too, Bar-Lev was one of the suspects, but no evidence was found against him.

In recent days, both Cohen and Bar-Lev have declared that there was no "bad blood" between them. But senior police officers view Bar-Lev's ouster as Cohen's way of paying his subordinate back for having stolen the spotlight from him.