One must stop and truly understand that the Supreme Court is not the acting elected government of Israel.

The question before Israel’s High Court is bigger than Itamar Ben-Gvir. It goes to the heart of who governs the State of Israel. The citizens, through their elected representatives, or an unelected legal echelon that increasingly sees itself as entitled to decide which ministers are acceptable. The court convened yesterday to hear petitions seeking to force Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to fire Ben-Gvir as national security minister. Attorney General Gali Baharav-Miara argues that he has improperly interfered with police independence, including on investigations, protests, appointments, and the promotion of Superintendent Rinat Saban. Netanyahu’s response is the exact opposite, that ordering Ben-Gvir’s dismissal would be an unconstitutional judicial invasion into the prime minister’s authority to form and maintain a government.

That is the first point that has to be stated clearly, this is not just a normal administrative dispute. Even the reporting around the case frames it as a constitutional confrontation over whether judges can effectively dictate cabinet composition. The case is testing the outer line between legitimate ministerial supervision and unlawful political interference in policing, while Netanyahu’s filing calls the requested remedy unconstitutional and beyond the court’s authority. The hearing was restricted to media and preapproved participants, intensifying the sense that the judiciary is stepping into one of the most politically explosive questions in the country.

The democratic problem is obvious. Israelis voted for a right-wing coalition in November 2022, and that coalition openly promised a harder line on internal security, terrorism, governance, and the balance between the elected branches and the legal establishment. Ben-Gvir was not smuggled into office under false pretenses. He came in with a public mandate to press a tougher law-and-order agenda, and Netanyahu appointed him to carry it out. Whatever one thinks of his style, the principle is straightforward, in a democracy voters are entitled to receive the policy direction they knowingly voted for, unless there is a clear legal bar to it. The court is not supposed to become a political veto chamber every time the losing camp cannot live with the winners agenda.

Ben-Gvir’s defenders also have a substantive record to point to. Start with the prison system. Since taking office, he has made the worsening of conditions for security prisoners a declared policy goal. Among the steps attributed to him in reputable reporting, reducing family visits for security prisoners from the de facto monthly norm back to once every two months, then extending a temporary halt on family visits after October 7, restricting shower time to four minutes with water available for only limited hours, and ordering the prison service to stop processing Palestinian Authority transfers to prisoner canteen accounts, which his office said amounted to NIS 400 per month for each of roughly 6,000 security prisoners. Additional reported measures included limiting yard time, reducing television access, and cutting back special food privileges. Whether critics like those policies or not, they were visible, concrete changes in the direction Ben-Gvir promised, fewer perks for terrorists and harsher prison conditions to the terrorists who have jewish children, women and men’s blood on their hands.

That matters politically because it distinguishes him from predecessors who managed the prison system rather than trying to fundamentally change its logic. The record shows Ben-Gvir pursued a much more aggressive strategy on prisoner conditions than the de facto status quo that preceded him.

A similar case on civilian self-defense. After the synagogue massacre in Jerusalem in early 2023, there were reports that Ben-Gvir pushed to raise the issuance pace for gun permits from around 2,000 a month to 10,000. After October 7, the push accelerated dramatically, by December 2023, more than 260,000 new firearm-permit requests had been submitted to his ministry, and Ben-Gvir said approvals had risen from roughly 100 a day before the war to up to 3,000 a day. Reports also show that 527 volunteer security squads were created after October 7 and that 20,000 firearms had been ordered for distribution to such squads, with another 20,000 to follow. In March 2026, Times of Israel reported that Ben-Gvir had expanded eligibility in Jerusalem so that more than 300,000 Jewish residents would be able to obtain a gun permit based on residence in newly added neighborhoods. Again, one can oppose the policy, but it is impossible to deny that he changed the internal-security landscape in a way his electorate explicitly wanted.

There are also symbolic and operational moves that reinforced his reputation as a minister who tries to execute rather than merely speak. In January police and Israel Land Authority officials demolished UNRWA’s Jerusalem headquarters after the legislative ban on the agency took effect and after months of failed attempts to deal with the site. During the operation, Ben-Gvir argued that while others talk, his ministry carries out the law in practice. This was not the kind of step previous ministers became identified with. It was classic Ben-Gvir politics, high-conflict, sovereignty-centered, and designed to show that the state can enforce its own decisions.

His broader agenda also remains visible in the legislative sphere. Netanyahu personally agreed to attend the vote on the death penalty for terrorists bill after speaking with Ben-Gvir, and the same report noted that the bill was being pushed by Otzma Yehudit. Whatever one thinks of that law on the merits, it shows Ben-Gvir’s ability to place a hard-security agenda at the center of national debate rather than at its margins.

On Ramadan, Israeli police completed special preparations in Jerusalem ahead of Ramadan 2026 amid fears of terrorism and incitement which in recent years had often become a flashpoint for dozens of terror attacks and rocket fire. This year’s Ramadan was the quietest since 2013 with exactly zero terror attacks to happen to the jewish citizens of the land of Israel.

Now for the other side. Petitioners and the attorney general are not arguing only that they dislike Ben-Gvir ideologically. They point to concrete episodes, especially the Rinat Saban affair, and claim he crossed the line from setting policy into interfering in professional law-enforcement discretion. That is the strongest version of their case, and it should be stated fairly. But even if one takes those allegations seriously, the remedy they seek remains extraordinary, not review of a particular decision, not cancellation of a particular appointment move, but judicial pressure to remove a sitting minister from office. That is exactly why Netanyahu’s filing describes the move as unconstitutional and why the case has become a proxy war over whether courts and legal advisers can overrule not merely policy, but the very composition of an elected government.

That is the line the court should not cross. Some would say Ben-Gvir is controversial. He is combative. He is polarizing. None of that is a legal standard for removal. In a democracy, the answer to a minister’s ideology is politics, oversight, legislation, elections, and targeted judicial review where a specific act is unlawful. The answer is not for judges to become the final hiring committee for the cabinet. If the High Court can effectively remove a minister because the legal establishment believes his governing philosophy is too aggressive, then the lesson for millions of right-wing voters will be unmistakable, you may vote but only within limits the unelected system is willing to tolerate.

That is not a small matter. It goes to the core of Israeli democracy. Ben-Gvir’s voters did not elect a potted plant. They elected a minister who promised to change prison policy, arm civilians, harden internal security, and back the police and prison service with a much firmer hand. On the available evidence, he has in fact tried to do exactly that. The court can judge legality in specific cases. It should not replace the voters.

© The Times of Israel (Blogs)