Ben Gvir refuses to sign off on promotion of senior investigator he has clashed with in the past

National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir announces his refusal to sign off on the promotion of Chief Superintendent Ruti Hauslich, a high-ranking police investigator with whom he has reportedly clashed in past meetings.

The far-right minister publishes a statement on Hauslich just hours after a judge ordered him to stop stonewalling the advancement of another detective, saying his behavior is motivated by “external considerations” and threatens law enforcement’s independence.

Hauslich will not advance in rank due to “a string of serious lapses in her conduct… which do not permit her promotion to a senior and sensitive role in the investigative system,” Ben Gvir says in a statement.

He accuses the officer of presenting positions in Knesset committee meetings that “contradict those of the Israel Police and National Security Ministry.”

Such behavior, he claims, amounts to impersonating authority, presenting false information to non-police bodies, and violating the law and the police’s code of conduct.

A former police investigator who worked with Hauslich tells The Times of Israel that she is a “very worthy, intelligent” officer who has been an investigator for many years. He adds that her boss, the chief of the police’s investigations and intelligence division, Deputy Commissioner Boaz Blatt, is disliked by Ben Gvir because he operates according to “professional standards, rather than the political desires and interests.”

Earlier today, the Jerusalem District Court ordered Ben Gvir to sign off on the promotion of Superintendent Rinat Saban, another officer in the police’s investigations and intelligence division who testified in Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s corruption trial.

Ben Gvir openly said in a statement decrying the ruling that Saban should be fired due her role in the supposedly “illegal” investigation into Netanyahu and his circle.