Israel’s Attorney General Gali Baharav-Miara instructed Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Thursday to fire Interior Minister Aryeh Deri.

Her instruction followed a Supreme Court ruling the day before, disqualifying the appointment of Deri because of his prior convictions of fraud and breach of trust.

The ruling of the Supreme Court marks a major step up in the ongoing culture war pitting democratic and liberal Israel against a conservative, nationalistic and extremist Jewish state. Since the Nov. 1 elections that brought to power a coalition of radical right-wing parties to form Israel’s most extremist government in 75 years of independence, both sides have been preparing, training and rattling their swords. The High Court’s nearly unanimous decision (10 to 1) on Deri, one of the pillars of the new coalition, drew the official line in the sand of this unprecedented 21st century version of this confrontation.

According to the ruling, Netanyahu will have to fire Deri in the coming days or send the country into an immediate constitutional tailspin. He understands this, as does Deri, whose appointment the justices ruled “unreasonable in the extreme” due to his criminal convictions, especially the one for tax fraud a year ago.