Netanyahu taps Sa'ar to end Israel's 16-month interior minister gap, on the caretaker clock

Israel is about to get its first interior minister in nearly 13 months. Likud announced on Tuesday that caretaker Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu will ask the cabinet on Wednesday to name Foreign Minister Gideon Sa'ar to the post, the Jerusalem Post reported. Sa'ar would keep the foreign ministry as well. The move comes a day after the new Knesset was sworn in and while rival Gadi Eisenkot tries to form a government that would replace Netanyahu's.

The appointment would end a vacancy that the state, in a filing to the High Court of Justice, acknowledged was causing serious legal and practical problems. During that time, decisions on residency, foreign caregivers, border staff and municipal finances waited for someone with legal authority to sign them. The open question now is how much a part-time, possibly short-lived minister can fix before a new government takes over, and whether the move answers the legal challenge that pushed it.

What Likud announced#

According to the Likud statement as reported by ynet, Netanyahu will bring the appointment to the cabinet on Wednesday. Because the government is now a caretaker government, the appointment does not need Knesset approval, ynet reported. It is temporary in any case: Sa'ar would serve until a new government is formed.

Ynet also reported that Sa'ar will in practice fill the post "half-time," because he is also foreign minister. Sa'ar served as interior minister once before, from 2013 to 2014, Walla reported.

The post was first offered to Likud faction chair Ofir Katz. He turned it down to focus on coordinating the Netanyahu-led bloc's "efforts in the Knesset," the Likud statement said, according to the Jerusalem Post. Katz had been reported as a leading candidate as far back as August.

The timing matters. Netanyahu's Likud and its allies won 53 of 120 seats in the October election. President Isaac Herzog gave the mandate to Gadi Eisenkot, whose bloc has a majority. Eisenkot's party canceled planned coalition talks with Likud on Tuesday, as 567 Politics reported. That means Sa'ar's term could last weeks or months, depending on how coalition talks go.

How the ministry lost its minister#

Moshe Arbel of Shas resigned as interior minister in July 2025, when the ultra-Orthodox parties broke with the government over military conscription. Justice Minister Yariv Levin then served as acting interior minister. That temporary role is limited by law to three months, and it expired on Oct. 22, 2025, the Jerusalem Post reported. If the cabinet approves Sa'ar, Israel will have gone nearly 13 months with no interior minister at all and almost 16 months without a permanent one, the Post calculated.

Netanyahu did not take the ministry himself. He cannot serve as a minister in that role because of his ongoing corruption trial, the Times of Israel noted. Instead, the government moved individual powers of the interior minister to the prime minister, one by one, as urgent needs arose.

What went undone#

The Interior Ministry handles population and immigration matters, elections and local government. Its staff kept working during the vacancy. But some decisions are reserved by law for the minister, and no one held that authority.

Government documents filed in the High Court case show the effects, according to the Jerusalem Post's review. They include:

• Urgent humanitarian applications to live or stay in Israel, including cases involving domestic violence or abuse by a spouse or parent. Some applicants had gone to court, and judges were demanding answers.
• Approvals for foreign caregivers. Exceptional humanitarian requests, permit quotas and the renewal of a review committee all needed ministerial sign-off. A temporary wartime measure let some rejected caregiver requests be reconsidered, but only within set deadlines that were running out.
• Sixteen border-control officials and 64 inspectors who had finished training but could not use their powers. The Knesset approved moving those powers to Netanyahu on Jan. 14, 2026.
• Local authorities that needed approval to take out loans, change some municipal taxes and distribute funding.

Some gaps were never closed. In August, government lawyers said no one held the power to issue orders letting municipalities share revenues, the Post reported. The vacancy also caused the government to miss a court deadline on municipal-tax discounts for people who had not met military-service requirements.

The court case behind the move#

The appointment follows a petition by the Movement for Quality Government in Israel (MQG), a good-governance group. It filed the case in December 2025, the Times of Israel reported. The petition asked the court to order a permanent appointment and to cancel the government decisions that moved the minister's powers to Netanyahu.

The state's August reply gave the scale of those transfers. The government had decided to move about 90 powers of the interior minister to the prime minister and one to the finance minister, MQG reported in its summary of the filing. The Knesset had approved 56 of them. About 35 were still awaiting approval at the time. The affected areas included Knesset elections, the voter registry, soldiers' voting, immigration and citizenship, entry into Israel, senior appointments, local government, municipal property taxes, planning and construction, and education.

In that reply, Attorney General Gali Baharav-Miara said the vacancy and the transfers "created practical legal difficulties" that were getting worse over time, the Times of Israel reported. The state said Netanyahu would appoint a minister "during the [current] election period," but gave no date. The Central Elections Committee had also warned that some of the minister's powers would likely be needed during the campaign, according to MQG.

MQG's summary of the reply also says the state accepted that the stopgap measures, including the transfers to Netanyahu, "do not provide a comprehensive solution and themselves raise additional difficulties." The group's core legal argument was that handing over powers one at a time "cannot substitute for a permanent minister who bears full responsibility for the Ministry's operations."

The gap was not only about signatures. The ministry also had no minister to set policy or to argue its case in cabinet and budget talks, the Jerusalem Post noted. Officials kept the ministry running, but without a political head in the room when money and priorities were decided.

No appointment came before the Oct. 27 vote. It came two weeks after it.

Three views on what comes next#

Likud and the government. Likud presents the move as filling the post, in line with the commitment Netanyahu gave the court in August. The party has not given a public reason for the timing beyond Katz's decision to decline. The Jerusalem Post noted that the appointment would allow a minister to make decisions left pending during the vacancy, affecting both citizens and local authorities.

The petitioners. MQG has said that a promise was not enough and that a temporary fix does not solve the problem. "A central government ministry cannot be run indefinitely through temporary arrangements and piecemeal transfers of authority," said Tomer Naor, the group's vice president for legal affairs and strategy, in its August statement. "The Prime Minister's announcement is an important step, but a statement of intent is not enough." The group said it would keep pushing for "a permanent Interior Minister who will assume full responsibility." That statement came before Sa'ar was named, and it is not known whether the group will see a temporary, part-time appointment as meeting its demand. MQG had not commented on Sa'ar's appointment by Tuesday night, as far as 567 Politics could find.

Local government. Local leaders have complained in public. Haim Bibas, the mayor of Modiin-Maccabim-Reut and chairman of the Center for Local Government, spoke at a ynet conference two weeks before the election. "The Interior Ministry is not functioning, it no longer exists. There has been no minister for a long time," he said, as reported by Ynetnews. His first priority, he said, was "to transfer budgets that are due."

No statement from the anti-Netanyahu parties on Sa'ar's appointment was found by Tuesday night. Their bloc's first bills, covered by 567 Politics, focus on an Oct. 7 state inquiry, term limits and repealing parts of the judicial overhaul, not the Interior Ministry.

What a caretaker minister can do#

Once approved, Sa'ar would be expected to hold the minister's powers, including some that were never moved to Netanyahu, such as the revenue-sharing orders the state said no one could issue. That could let some pending files move. But the job comes with limits. Sa'ar will split his time with the foreign ministry during a period of heavy diplomatic work on Iran, Gaza and U.S. military aid. And a new government could replace him soon.

How soon is unclear. Under Basic Law: The Government, Eisenkot has 28 days from his Nov. 8 nomination to form a coalition, with up to 14 more if the president agrees, as 567 Politics' coalition timetable explains. His bloc is also moving to replace Knesset Speaker Amir Ohana in a vote expected on Nov. 17, 567 Politics reported.

The Interior Ministry also touches the election machinery. Its minister has powers over the voter registry and soldiers' voting, according to the state's filing. If coalition talks fail and Israel heads to another election, those powers would matter again.

What to watch#

The cabinet vote on Wednesday is the first step. After that, it is not yet known whether the government will ask the High Court to close the MQG petition, whether the petitioners will accept a temporary appointment, and which pending decisions Sa'ar will take first. It is also not known whether a new government would keep Sa'ar, name its own minister, or move the ministry to a coalition partner.