National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir informed the Jerusalem District Court on Tuesday that he would sign off after Independence Day on the promotion of senior police officer Ruti Hauslich, effectively ending the administrative petition she filed after he blocked her advancement despite the backing of the police command.
The court then gave that notice the force of a decision and deleted the petition as moot, while leaving open the question of legal costs.
The one-page ruling, issued by Judge Tamar Bar-Asher on Wednesday, records Ben-Gvir’s updated position that Hauslich’s promotion “will be signed after Independence Day,” after the court raised questions during last week’s hearing about the weight of the claims against her compared with the administrative threshold generally required to block an appointment.
The judge wrote that in light of that notice, the petition had indeed been exhausted and was therefore deleted, but said responses from Hauslich and from the state on the minister’s request to avoid costs must be filed by May 7.
The move marked a sharp reversal in a case that had become another test of the limits of Ben-Gvir’s authority over police promotions. Hauslich, a senior officer in the police Investigations and Intelligence Division, had been recommended by Police Commissioner Daniel Levi and the senior command for appointment as head of the Investigations Department and for promotion in rank, but Ben-Gvir refused to approve the step, accusing her of serious misconduct in her appearances before Knesset committees and of using a title she had not formally received.
At the hearing last week, however, the court stopped short of immediately ordering the promotion and instead gave the minister 10 days to reconsider his position.
Judge: Hauslich had been turned into a 'scapegoat'
During the hearing, Bar-Asher signaled serious difficulty with the minister’s stance, with the state arguing that the decision ignored Hauslich’s qualifications and the recommendations of the professional command echelon. As Bar-Asher saw it, Hauslich had been turned into a “scapegoat,” she said.
The attorney-general’s office had previously backed Hauslich’s petition and argued that Ben-Gvir’s refusal appeared to rest on extraneous considerations. Deputy Attorneys-General Gil Limon and Sharon Afek later notified the minister that they had taken note of his intention to sign the promotion and that, in their view, there was no basis for the claims raised in the petition against her.
Ben-Gvir nevertheless tried to frame the retreat as only partial. In his letter to the court, submitted through counsel David Peter, he said that alongside the decision to proceed with the promotion, he intended to continue pressing the attorney-general for broader clarifications about the norms governing appearances before Knesset committees.
In an earlier public statement, he had also demanded the attorney-general’s position on what he described as the use in the Knesset of a title that had not formally been granted to Hauslich.
The case also landed in the shadow of the earlier Rinat Saban affair, in which the court intervened after Ben-Gvir blocked another police promotion. At last week’s hearing, Hauslich’s lawyer argued that the same pattern was repeating itself: a professionally approved appointment in the investigations branch being derailed after the fact on grounds that did not meet the legal bar for ministerial intervention.
That argument gained added weight because the Hauslich petition came just a day after the High Court heard sweeping petitions, backed by Attorney-General Gali Baharav-Miara, accusing Ben-Gvir of repeated improper interference in police operations and appointments.
In practical terms, Tuesday’s notice means Hauslich is now set to receive the promotion Ben-Gvir had withheld for months. But the broader fight the case exposed - over whether senior police appointments are being used as a lever of political discipline - remains very much alive, both in the pending costs issue in Jerusalem District Court and in the wider High Court battle over the minister’s conduct toward the police.