High Court orders Netanyahu to explain why he hasn’t fired Ben Gvir
The High Court of Justice on Wednesday ordered Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to explain why he hasn’t fired Itamar Ben Gvir as national security minister, amid an ongoing court case over the far-right politician’s practices and policies in office.
In the ruling, signed by five Supreme Court justices, the court demanded Netanyahu “explain why he should not order the removal” of Ben Gvir from his ministerial post. The court gave Netanyahu and Ben Gvir until March 10 to submit their responses.
A hearing on the petitions is scheduled for March 24, the court said, also declaring that the panel of justices that will hear the case is being expanded to nine: President Isaac Amit, Noam Sohlberg, Daphne Barak-Erez, Yael Willner, Ofer Grosskopf, Gila Canfy-Steinitz, Khaled Kabub and Yechiel Kasher.
The court said it was expanding the panel of judges in light of “the nature and the gravity” of the case. High Court hearings are generally heard by three justices, but the court can expand that to five or nine — or even the entire bench — on issues it deems particularly sensitive.
A hearing was originally scheduled for January 15, but a day before it was scheduled to take place the court delayed it until late March, and at the time also ordered the panel to be expanded to five justices.
Responding to the High Court on Wednesday, Ben Gvir accused the justices of seeking to nullify the will of the voters.
“The High Court of Justice doesn’t just want to fire me, it wants to fire the nation, it wants to fire millions of voters and deprive them of the right to vote,” he declared in a video statement. “It won’t happen, they have no authority, there won’t be a coup!”
The court order was also denounced by Cabinet Secretary Yossi Fuchs, who was quoted by the Ynet news site telling a conference that ordering the termination of a serving minister who is not under criminal investigation crosses a “red line” and that such a ruling would constitute “a clearly illegal order.”
A month ago, Attorney General Gali Baharav-Miara filed a statement to the court saying that Ben Gvir systematically abuses his powers and that Netanyahu must be ordered to explain why he hasn’t fired him.
In a 68-page opinion, Baharav-Miara accused Ben Gvir of inappropriately intervening in police operations through a “continuous (sometimes sophisticated) system of pressure” on police officers. She alleged that Ben Gvir had used his office to pressure police on issues including the treatment of anti-government protesters, the status quo on the Temple Mount, protection for Gaza-bound aid trucks and appointments within police ranks.
In his own filing to the court last month, Ben Gvir denied that he is improperly intervening in police business, and asserted that the court has no standing to weigh in on his tenure.
His attorney claimed that Baharav-Miara “does not have a single example of any actual interference by the minister in investigations, of corruption of the appointments process, of issuing operational directives to the police, or of issuing unlawful instructions in the area of demonstrations.”
Last month, Netanyahu reportedly vowed that he would not fire Ben Gvir, whose far-right Otzma Yehudit party is a partner in the prime minister’s coalition.
A week later, a group of coalition leaders — including Ben Gvir himself, Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar and coalition whip MK Ofir Katz — wrote a letter to Netanyahu urging him to defy any potential High Court ruling calling on him to fire the national security minister.
“No legal authority, including the High Court of Justice, has the power to force the dismissal of a government minister, especially when no indictment has even been filed against him,” they wrote.
In December, Baharav-Miara wrote to Netanyahu that the petitions against Ben Gvir have earned a “factual and legal foundation” due to the minister’s actions.
She noted that the court had approved Ben Gvir’s appointment in December 2022, upon the formation of the government, despite petitions that argued he was ineligible to oversee police given his history of racist statements and criminal record, including a conviction for supporting a Jewish terror group.
At the time, the court took into account Ben Gvir’s statements that he had changed, and judges also assumed “the professional independence of the police would be maintained and the minister would not serve as an ‘uber-commissioner’” of police, Baharav-Miara noted.
But that assumption no longer held, wrote the attorney general, accusing Ben Gvir of illegally overstepping the bounds of his position and interfering in internal police matters on a regular basis.
Sam Sokol contributed to this report.
