National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir attended a much-anticipated hearing Wednesday morning in the High Court of Justice on petitions demanding his dismissal over his alleged politicization of police.

The nine-judge panel adjourned after nearly 10 hours of deliberation, without coming to an immediate decision.

The stormy hearing in Jerusalem was the culmination of a months-long effort to oust Ben Gvir. Petitioners laid out the ultranationalist politician’s controversial track record as minister, claiming his years of public statements, heavy-handed interference in police promotions and personal involvement in operational matters have undermined law enforcement’s independence.

Though judges seemed to agree with petitioners’ claims that Ben Gvir illicitly interfered in police operations, they appeared hesitant to take the unprecedented step of ordering Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to fire him and opted to exercise restraint.

Judges instead signaled that they would instruct the government to reach a compromise with Attorney General Gali Baharav-Miara that would rein in the minister, while allowing him to remain in his post.

Shosh Shmueli, representing the attorney general, urged the court to issue an interim order — meant to serve as a stand-in during talks between the three parties — barring Ben Gvir from interfering in police appointments linked to investigations, freedom of expression and the force’s legal counsel.

Justice Minister Yariv Levin, the architect of the government’s controversial legislative campaign to overhaul Israel’s judiciary, vowed ahead of the hearing that the government would defy any decision reached by judges.

The very fact that the judges sat to hear the petitions sparked outrage among Ben Gvir’s right-wing supporters.

Crucial to the minister’s argument is that the High Court lacks any mandate to issue a ruling on the matter, which both he and Netanyahu — also a respondent in the case — characterized as a mere administrative issue.

The hearing was broadcast live, but judges had decided several days prior to bar the public from attending in person for fear it would lead to disruption of courtroom proceedings.

That ban did not extend to lawmakers, though, and several far-right MKs decided to attend the hearing as a demonstration of support for Ben Gvir. Tally Gotliv, May Golan, and Idit Silman from the Likud Party and Limor Son Har Melech from Ben Gvir’s Otzma Yehudit repeatedly shouted down judges, leading Chief Justice Isaac Amit to expel them from the hearing.

Ben Gvir concurs with AG

About an hour before the hearing, Ben Gvir himself arrived at the courthouse to much fanfare, wading through an unruly crowd of several hundred supporters who gathered to protest against his potential dismissal.

Behind a human chain formed by Border Police, protesters sounded blowhorns while waving signs denouncing Israel’s legal system as a “judicial dictatorship.”

“Gali Baharav-Miara says that I am deciding policy and changing the police. She is correct,” Ben Gvir said to loud applause. He spoke to reporters alongside his fellow party members in Otzma Yehudit, a handful of Likud lawmakers and far-right activists.

“I am not a puppet of the State Attorney’s Office. I’m not a potted plant. I am a minister who was chosen in order to govern,” he said. As the politician spoke, his supporters chanted that Amit and other justices were “traitors.”

As demonstrators continued to vent their frustration outside the High Court, Ben Gvir and other politicians discreetly entered the building and took their seats in the courtroom.

Politics or rule of law?

The lengthy hearing touched on a litany of controversies involving Ben Gvir and the police.

According to petitioners, these embodied a pattern in which the minister has overstepped the limits of his role by putting political pressure on police officers.

Ben Gvir’s legal representation insisted he was simply exercising his right to free expression, characterizing attempts to oust the minister as a means of canceling the results of the last election.

Among the many instances of alleged interference cited in the petitions were his attempts to block the promotions of two female police investigators, Rinat Saban and Ruti Hauslich, against the counsel of senior police brass.

Saban, whose advancement Ben Gvir sought to block explicitly due to her involvement in Netanyahu’s corruption trial, was promoted without the minister’s signature by the force of a court ruling, which deemed that the national security minister was spurred on by “extraneous considerations.” Hauslich, whose case is still pending in court, has reportedly clashed with Ben Gvir over how to handle incitement investigations.

The question of the police’s shifting approach to speech offenses was also subject to discussion, in light of a fledgling law enforcement body established by Ben Gvir to probe online incitement.

The department’s activities were recently frozen on a court order after its head Udi Ronen — a Ben Gvir appointee — reportedly asked officers to send him names of individuals that “interest or concern them,” with the goal of monitoring their social media posts.

During a testy back-and-forth with David Peter, Ben Gvir’s lawyer, Justice Alex Stein said that the body evokes “parallel institutions” that once existed in East Germany and the former Soviet Union.

“I don’t get it. When did investigating incitement to terrorism become a problematic occurrence?” Peter said.

“It’s not just incitement to terrorism, the definition [of the department’s mission] is very wide, and evokes parallel organizations in East Germany and the former Soviet Union,” replied Stein, who is known as a conservative justice.

Later on, while setting out his argument, Peter accused petitioners of seeking to “tear up the ballots” of all who voted for Ben Gvir.

“The story isn’t Ruti Hauslich, it’s not Rinat Saban… This is about the one thousand police appointments that have occurred [during Ben Gvir’s term]. That’s the story, that’s what’s so hard to swallow,” he said.

“Today, there is not a police station in the State of Israel whose commander wasn’t appointed by the minister. There are people who just can’t swallow the democratic outcome,” he continued.

Though Ben Gvir and five other lawmakers in his far-right Otzma Yehudit party won seats in the Knesset, voters did not choose him to be national security minister, since cabinet appointments are the purview of the prime minister.

At one point during the hearing, Peter took to Greek mythology to apparently warn the judges of the potentially violent implications for the court if it rules against his client.

Peter told the story of the hunter Actaeon, who was transformed into a stag and torn apart by his own hunting dogs after violating a divine boundary, to argue that if the court oversteps into political matters, it risks losing its judicial authority and becoming vulnerable to attack.

Despite the arguments made by the respondents, judges tended to side with petitioners in their characterization of Ben Gvir’s influence over the police.

High Court Justice Isaac Amit said Ben Gvir routinely gave public support to police officers, but only those who served his particular agenda.

“We see, and this isn’t [just] a feeling, that the minister very much supports police officers — and that’s fantastic — but only if they do something for one side,” he said to Ben Gvir’s lawyer.

“He supports the officers who hit a protester… When someone [an officer] kills an Arab, whether in the West Bank, East Jerusalem or Tarabin [al-Sana], there is support,” he continued.

Peter accused the judge of quoting “a collection of news articles,” before Amit contradicted him: “This is all from the mouth of the minister.”

Meanwhile, when “police beat Haredim at Mount Meron [during Lag B’Omer], there is no support. They are immediately suspended,” Amit continued.

Although judges concurred with petitioners’ arguments of interference, they were hesitant to order his dismissal, with Justice Stein calling the prospect “the most extreme step.”

“This request, and I’m not rejecting it out of hand, is certainly not trivial,” Stein said.

“No country in the world has a mechanism that allows a court to dismiss a minister from his position. It very much could be that this is what must happen here… but we should also be aware that this is the most extreme step,” he continued.

Though the court has ruled before on whether or not to order the dismissal of a minister, such hearings were always in the context of a criminal offense committed by a cabinet member.

In January 2023, the High Court ruled 10-1 that the appointment of Shas leader Aryeh Deri as a cabinet minister was “unreasonable in the extreme” due to a recent criminal conviction and the plea bargain he secured by promising to quit politics, which he subsequently reneged on. Deri therefore lost his positions as minister of the interior and health.

Petitioners claim that Ben Gvir’s case is “much more grave” than that of Deri. “This is at the heart of the court’s role — human rights, police independence, fundamental values… What is happening right now is a blow to democracy. It’s happening before our eyes,” said Shmueli, representing the attorney general.

Throughout the hearing, the High Court signaled it would order Ben Gvir, Netanyahu and Attorney General Gali Baharav-Miara to reach a framework of principles meant to curb his influence over the police.

However, the petitioners were wary, since a similar framework between Ben Gvir and Baharav-Miara fell apart last year, with the latter accusing the former of repeatedly violating the agreement.

Those alleged violations were what prompted her to support the petitions for his ousting discussed on Wednesday.

“With deep respect for the approach of judicial restraint, it will not work… I say this with pain,” said Dan Haklai, another lawyer on the side of the petitioners.

Shmueli concurred, saying that after the first attempt failed, the attorney general was skeptical that another compromise would serve as a “cure for the harm done to individual freedoms.”

Justice Daphne Barak-Erez indicated that a new agreement between Ben Gvir and Baharav-Miara could be beneficial if it includes sanctions against violations.

Shmueli requested that, should the High Court decline to sign off on Ben Gvir’s sacking, it issue an interim order immediately blocking him from carrying out certain actions vis-a-vis the police.

She asked the judges to forbid Ben Gvir from appointing officers to sensitive positions that deal with investigations, freedom of expression and the police’s legal counsel; from participating in police operations that involve friction with civilians, such as house raids or face-to-face discussions with residents; and from meeting with officers without the presence of Police Commissioner Danny Levy.

Peter opposed the prospective interim order. “We’re firing the minister without [actually] firing him,” he interjected.

Closing out the hearing, Amit harked back to the protests, criticizing Ben Gvir.

“Even this hearing that took place here today, to a certain extent, normalized very harsh expressions, to say the least, by Minister Ben Gvir,” Amit said. “When one talks about judges and calls them enemies of the nation, that’s not a criticism. It’s something else.”

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