Bid to force Ben-Gvir's dismissal unlawfully invades Netanyahu's authority, gov't tells High Court

In their filing, they asked the court to dismiss the conditional order and reject the petitions, casting the case not as a routine administrative dispute but as a constitutional effort to allow legal officials to decide who may serve in government.

The response comes ahead of Wednesday’s hearing in the closely watched case over Ben-Gvir’s alleged unlawful involvement in police matters.

That position sharply diverges from Attorney-General Gali Baharav-Miara’s, who told the court last month that an absolute order should be issued instructing Netanyahu to fire Ben-Gvir, arguing that he has abused his authority in order to improperly influence police activity in sensitive operational and investigative spheres.

The High Court’s earlier conditional order was directed specifically at Netanyahu because, as the appointing authority, he had not yet personally set out his position.

In the government’s telling, however, that is precisely what makes the petitions so problematic. The filing argues that under Israel’s constitutional structure, the composition of the cabinet is entrusted to the prime minister and the Knesset’s political framework, not to judicial substitution through broad reasonableness-style review dressed up as administrative law.

It says the attorney-general’s position would collapse the line between legal advice and governing power and effectively allow unelected officials to remove ministers over disputed questions of policy, rhetoric, and ministerial oversight.

Ben-Gvir, in a separate response of his own, took that argument even further, contending that the court lacks both the authority and the legal basis to order his removal at all.

His filing argues that Basic Law: The Government sets out the rules for ministerial tenure and disqualification, that only the prime minister holds the power to dismiss a serving minister, and that the petitions seek to create a new route for judicial intervention with no anchor in statute or precedent.

It also frames the case as nonjusticiable, portraying it as an attempt to turn political disagreement over his conduct and rhetoric into a legal mechanism for reshaping the elected government.

Ben-Gvir’s response also turns directly on Baharav-Miara, arguing that she is conflicted because he has long called for her dismissal and has taken part in efforts to end her tenure.

From there, the filing tries to recast the factual record, insisting that there is no concrete example of unlawful interference in an investigation, appointment, or protest-policing decision, and that the attorney-general has instead piled together disparate episodes to manufacture a cumulative case for removal.

The government's and the Prime Minister's responses repeatedly insist that the petitioners and the Attorney-General have bundled together a series of very different incidents and mislabeled them as unlawful operational interference.

It argues that many of the cited episodes were public statements, demands for stricter enforcement, or discussions about general policing policy rather than direct orders in concrete operational matters.

The filing also maintains that some of the episodes did not concern police activity at all, some involved areas where the minister was entitled to set policy, and some cannot be tied to any actual police decision. On that basis, the cumulative picture presented to the court is legally inflated, according to the government.

The filing argues that even incidents where Ben-Gvir spoke forcefully or intrusively still do not amount to the kind of concrete, unlawful commandeering of police powers that could justify judicially forcing his dismissal.

One of the most important background episodes remains the Rinat Saban affair, which the attorney-general has treated as a concrete example of improper political interference in police personnel matters.

In February, the Jerusalem District Court ordered Ben-Gvir to promote Police Supt. Rinat Saban, ruling that his refusal was unlawful, tainted by extraneous considerations, and harmful to police independence. The court noted that Saban had unanimous professional backing, and her only connection to Netanyahu-related cases had been tangential and years earlier.

The government’s current response, however, pushes back against turning that and similar episodes into a constitutional trigger for removal from office. It argues that disputes over appointments, promotions, protest policy, or ministerial rhetoric cannot simply be aggregated into a legal basis for the court to reorganize the cabinet.

Even if some conduct were controversial, the filing says, the remedy sought by the petitioners is extreme, disproportionate, and fundamentally inconsistent with Basic Law.

Ben-Gvir, in his own response, disputes Baharav-Miara’s presentation of the Temple Mount issue, claiming that his actions there were coordinated with Netanyahu. He argues that controversies such as the Rinat Saban affair and protest-related disputes cannot be used as a constitutional basis to force him out of office.

At bottom, the government’s response filing asks the justices to treat the case as relevant to whether Ben-Gvir’s aggressiveness has crossed into justiciable constitutional grounds for forcing Netanyahu to fire him, not about whether Ben-Gvir has been an unusually aggressive minister.

That is the line the government says the court must refuse to cross. The attorney-general has argued the opposite, namely that Ben-Gvir’s conduct reflects a cumulative pattern of abuse that has already compromised police independence and therefore requires his removal.

Wednesday’s hearing is expected to center on the clash between two competing readings of the minister’s role and the court’s power to intervene.