The nebulous National Guard law enforcement body created by National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir has been operating for a year without clear government-approved guidelines determining its function, lawmakers heard Monday.

The force has been active across the country for over a year, but it remains unclear who it answers to or what its mandate is, according to a report by the Knesset’s Research and Information Center, which found itself stonewalled by the National Security Ministry when it tried to find out.

At a meeting of the Knesset State Comptroller Committee Monday to discuss the report, published last week, MKs were told that government ministries involved in establishing the National Guard still do not agree on how it should function, though the force has been operating since early 2025.

Tzachi Lugassi, head of the National Guard and Civil Defense Administration in Ben Gvir’s ministry, stressed in the meeting that the force is meant to deal solely with emergency situations.

“It must be said that the National Guard is a body that will respond only to emergencies, and this is what it was built for,” he said.

In practice, the force’s reach extends further than emergencies. National Guard officers were recently seen manning checkpoints in the Old City after the first Friday prayers of Ramadan. In December, the force spearheaded a controversial, weeks-long raid in the southern Bedouin town of Tarabin al-Sana, in which a man was killed by police gunfire on his doorstep during an overnight operation.

Its officers have also taken part in dispersing anti-government protests, and were filmed punching and kicking protesters in a wave of demonstrations that swept Jerusalem in March 2025.

Earlier this month, investigators in the State Attorney’s Office announced they were investigating four National Guard officers on suspicion of beating two Bedouin men in the southern town of Tel Sheva.

Members are ostensibly part of the Border Police, a militarized force within the police that recruits from army enlistees, but it is unclear whether they answer to the Border Police or to the National Guard and Civil Defense Administration, which was established by Ben Gvir.

Officers dress like ordinary Border Police officers, with olive-green uniforms and patches on either arm with the National Guard’s name and insignia.

The authors of the report said that the National Security Ministry refused to address any of its queries about how the National Guard functions or the makeup of its recruits, resulting in a brief and largely inconclusive study.

The report, commissioned by MK Gilad Kariv of The Democrats, lists over a dozen questions that remain unanswered, including whether the government ever approved guidelines for the National Guard, the force’s size, budget, resources at its disposal, and recruitment standards.

“We did not find regulation or operational guidelines for the activity of the National Guard or National Guard and Civil Defense Administration,” read the research paper.

Kariv expressed alarm about the lack of transparency on the part of Ben Gvir’s ministry. “The establishment of a paramilitary policing body distanced from the eyes of the public without instructions, guidelines, or a clear government decision is a recipe for disaster,” he said.

Lambasting Ben Gvir, he said the danger posed by the force is even more acute when it is “operated by a criminal racist without any respect for democratic values.”

The establishment of a civil defense force — ostensibly to secure the country against internal threats — had long been one of the top demands of Ben Gvir.

But its genesis was accompanied by worries that the far-right lawmaker, who has been accused of attempting to politicize the police, would wield undue control over the poorly defined force and use the National Guard as a cudgel against political or ideological enemies.

The idea for a National Guard was first promoted by former prime minister Naftali Bennett, in light of the police’s bungled response to internecine riots that broke out in mixed cities in May 2021, during a previous war with Gaza. But the proposal failed to get off the ground before his government collapsed.

Upon becoming national security minister, Ben Gvir began advocating for the formation of a National Guard, but, unlike Bennett, sought to ensure that such a force would report directly to him.

According to the report, the process of setting up the National Guard began in April 2023, with a government decision ordering that a committee headed by the director of the National Security Ministry draft recommendations regarding the force’s operation to send to Ben Gvir, who would then seek the government’s approval.

Though the decision laid out a roadmap for the National Guard’s formation, it did not actually establish the force. The National Security Ministry website claimed the committee met nine separate times from June to August 2023, and eventually submitted its report in November to Ben Gvir.

But the document was never made public, and the recommendations were never submitted to the government.

Keren Aviram, who works in the National Security Ministry’s legal bureau, told the Knesset committee Monday that discord between ministries as to how the National Guard should function had held up the proposal.

Since 2023, “we have been working with government ministries to come to agreements to bring about a follow-up government decision,” she said.

But the National Guard began operating anyway. The first officers’ cohort in the National Guard had its inauguration ceremony in January 2025, where they were placed under the command of Deputy Commissioner Nachshon Nagler, former chief of police’s Negev precinct.

While the National Guard’s webpage states that it operates under the Border Police, the Knesset report appeared to cast doubt on its independence from the National Security Ministry, under Ben Gvir, due to the vague role of the National Guard and Civil Defense Administration.

The body was founded in August in Ben Gvir’s ministry, with the stated aim of “centralizing and coordinating the ministry’s activities concerning the National Guard, civil defense, volunteer security squads, and security components in the public space.”

However, Lugassi told the Knesset on Monday that he had no operational control over the National Guard, which receives orders from the Border Police, subordinate to the chain of command in the Israel Police.

He said the role of the National Guard and Civil Defense Administration is to “assist in establishing the National Guard,” and “ensure that it is fulfilling the tasks that it needs to carry out,” while “assisting in anything budget-related.”

However, the authors of the Knesset report said concrete information about the ministerial body and its operations remained opaque, with the ministry refusing to respond to its queries.

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