He told police officers in May that he wants the ministry again, or else to install someone from it in his place. In July he added that it stays with Otzma Yehudit even if he takes a more senior portfolio, which he has never named. Firing the attorney general, not any ministry, is his stated condition for joining the next coalition.
Who they are
Itamar Ben-Gvir is a lawyer who leads Otzma Yehudit and serves as national security minister. He was born in Jerusalem in 1976 and grew up in Mevaseret Zion, his mother an Irgun activist of Kurdish descent. At sixteen he joined Meir Kahane’s Kach, becoming its youth coordinator and studying at the yeshiva Kahane had founded; the movement was outlawed as a terrorist organisation in 1994. He was never conscripted, and says the army refused him over his Kach past.
He read law at the Ono Academic Campus; the bar association first refused to let him take articles because of his record, and he qualified in 2012 after several appeals, going on to represent right-wing defendants in ideological cases. He was parliamentary aide to the member of Knesset Michael Ben-Ari. As minister he renamed his department the ministry of national security and won cabinet approval for a national guard.
By February 2009, 46 indictments had been filed against him; he was acquitted in 39 and convicted in eight, of rioting, damage to property, obstructing a police officer, holding propaganda material for terrorist organisations, incitement to racism and support for a terrorist organisation. He says that of 53 indictments brought against him he was acquitted in 46, and calls the record persecution.
Positions and record
Security: Death penalty for terrorists; loosened open-fire rules.
Sovereignty: Jewish sovereignty across all territories.
Guns: A mass civilian arming campaign.
Where they stand
Holds the party line on every issue.