Controversial project: Israel’s cabinet paves way for national guard

In order to be able to postpone the judicial reform, Israel’s Prime Minister Netanyahu had to promise his far-right coalition partner the formation of a national guard. Now the plans for the controversial project are becoming more concrete.

“No armed militia for Ben-Gvir,” chanted a group of women during the mass protests last Saturday. Because: It was one of the great fears of the protest movement that Itamar Ben-Gvir, right-wing Minister for National Security in the cabinet of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, would get the green light to form a new National Guard.

For a week now, since Netanyahu temporarily suspended the controversial judicial reform, the public has known what political price his coalition partner Ben-Gvir had demanded for remaining in government: the implementation of the national guard he had demanded, as already stated in the coalition agreement, of course rather dare, had been fixed.

At the mass demonstrations on Saturday evening in Tel Aviv, almost a dozen men wore black fantasy uniforms, black peaked caps and black balaclavas – to the sounds of the “Star Wars” soundtrack. “With fire, with blood – we protect the dictatorship,” shouted a young man through his megaphone during the macabre protest parade of the black-uniformed demonstrators.

Government mandates formation of a National Guard

Then on Sunday, during the weekly cabinet meeting in Jerusalem, the government ordered the formation of a national guard – as requested by Security Minister Ben-Gvir. Within the next three months, a commission, in which all relevant security services and the army are represented, should make proposals as to what powers this national guard should have – and above all who it should report to: the Minister for National Security, Ben-Gvir, or the chief of the Israeli police.

Ben-Gvir has repeatedly made it clear that this unit must be placed under his control and that these forces should be used to counteract potential unrest and to fight crime in the Arab communities in Israel. These units would also become active along the borders with the Palestinian cities and communes in the occupied West Bank. Ben-Gvir announced on army radio that the newly formed National Guard would “exclusively” take care of it.

Police and secret service against new guard

Resistance to the plans, which have not yet been finalized, is coming not only from the opposition parties, but above all from the ranks of the Israeli police leadership and the domestic secret service Shin Bet. The formation of a national guard is “unnecessary and involves enormously high costs that could affect the personal security of citizens,” wrote police chief Kobi Shabtai in a letter to Ben-Gvir.

The demonstrators, who have taken to the streets in their hundreds of thousands every Saturday night for the past 13 weeks, fear that a future national guard could also be deployed against the protest movement.

Already at the beginning of March, demonstrators sensed that Security Minister Ben-Gvir would incite the police against them: “I was involved in the demonstrations right from the start. And the police officers were fantastic at the beginning. There was no violence and everything was perfect with them We kept all our agreements with them, but from the moment Ben-Gvir started turning the police on us, we felt the violence on the ground.”