File photo: Israeli Minister of National Security Itamar Ben-Gvir . AFP
A statement said the government had "unanimously approved Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's proposal to reappoint Ben-Gvir," who resigned on 19 January in protest of the Gaza ceasefire agreement reached with Hamas.
On Tuesday, Ben-Gvir's pro-settler and ultranationalist Jewish Power party announced its return to the government following the Israeli army’s resumption of its war on Gaza earlier in the day.
According to Israel’s public broadcaster, the decision to reinstate Ben-Gvir was made despite opposition from the government’s legal advisor.
His return strengthened a coalition left with a thin parliamentary majority when he departed.
Ben-Gvir, 48, was known as a hardline extremist even before he helped Netanyahu form the most right-wing coalition in Israel's history.
While in the cabinet, he repeatedly attacked the army and Netanyahu over the conduct of the war in Gaza, opposing any deal with Hamas and threatening at times to bring down the government if it signed a deal to end the war without destroying Hamas.
Together with a fellow extremist, Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, he called for occupying Gaza and re-establishing the Jewish settlements there, which Israel abandoned in 2005.
Ben-Gvir, a West Bank settler, argued that the departure of Palestinians and re-establishment of Israeli settlements "is a correct, just, moral and humane solution."
"This is an opportunity to develop a project to encourage Gaza's residents to emigrate to countries around the world," he said during one of his party's meetings in 2024.
Ben-Gvir's provocative visit in August to the Al-Aqsa Mosque compound in Jerusalem was one of a series of actions that inflamed global outrage.
The visit and his declaration that Jews should be allowed to pray there in defiance of decades-old status quo arrangements covering a site holy to both Muslims and Jews drew condemnation, including in Israel.
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