Israel’s far-right National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir has moved to expand his controversial loosening of civilian firearm regulations to the Jerusalem-adjacent city of Beit Shemesh, while explicitly barring members of the anti-Zionist ultra-Orthodox group Neturei Karta from accessing gun licenses, Israel Hayom reported Monday.
The expansion of the minister’s signature gun reform forms part of a broader push that began shortly after he took office, which has already upended decades of tighter Israeli regulations on civilian gun ownership. In October 2023, the Israeli government approved a sweeping set of rule changes that drastically lowered eligibility requirements for ordinary civilians to obtain personal firearms. As of the latest reporting, roughly 300,000 additional Israeli citizens have secured gun licenses since Ben Gvir assumed his post, and residents of more than 200 municipalities across the country now qualify for the program.
Under the latest expansion, most residents of Beit Shemesh – a city with a large ultra-Orthodox population located just west of Jerusalem – will newly qualify to apply for licenses to carry personal firearms. However, the fringe anti-Zionist Neturei Karta community, which maintains a presence in the city, has been completely locked out of the scheme. Eligibility for the program is mapped by residential address, with Israeli police and Ben Gvir’s office specifically removing all streets where Neturei Karta members reside from the eligible zones.
“I am proud to continue the weapons reform and expand it to Beit Shemesh as well,” Ben Gvir told Israel Hayom. “The residents of Beit Shemesh, like all citizens of the State of Israel who love the State of Israel, have a basic right to defend themselves and their family members.”
Data from The Jerusalem Post shows that 126 additional communities have been added to the eligible list for expanded gun access in 2026 alone. Ben Gvir has pledged to continue rolling out the reform across the country, saying he will “expand the weapons reform, add more cities, towns and neighbourhoods to eligibility, and ensure that as many citizens as possible can defend themselves and the State of Israel.” Repeating his long-stated policy mantra, he added: “My policy is clear: weapons in the right hands save lives.”
Justifying the exclusion of Neturei Karta – a small ultra-Orthodox faction whose name translates from Aramaic to “guardians of the city” and which rejects the existence of a Jewish state before the coming of the messiah, routinely advocating for Palestinian causes and rejecting engagement with Israeli state institutions – Ben Gvir argued the group’s positioning makes them ineligible. “Whoever prides himself with the PLO flag and takes photos with terrorists is an enemy, and therefore the neighbourhoods of the extremists have been excluded from eligibility for weapons,” he said.
The explosive growth in gun ownership under Ben Gvir’s reforms is well-documented. Before he took leadership of the national security ministry, data from Haaretz shows only around 170,000 Israelis held active firearm licenses. That number has more than doubled in the years since the regulations were loosened. By June of last year, total gun license applications filed since late 2023 had surpassed 400,000, the Times of Israel reported.
The expansion of civilian gun access has drawn widespread criticism from analysts, human rights groups, and independent researchers, who have flagged a range of severe risks stemming from the policy. Experts have repeatedly warned that the spread of unregulated firearms among Israeli civilians has fueled a sharp rise in violence targeting both Palestinians and women within Israel. Critics also note that the reform systematically excludes Palestinian citizens of Israel, who are barred entirely from obtaining gun licenses under the current framework.
Data from the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) underscores these concerns: in the first half of 2026 alone, OCHA recorded more than 1,000 settler attacks against Palestinians that caused injury or property damage across 230 Palestinian communities. The Israel Democracy Institute, an independent Israeli research center, has concluded that Ben Gvir’s gun reform “primarily serves Israel’s Jewish citizens, at times while creating a threat to and endangering those who are not Jewish.”
This latest expansion of the scheme follows a similar move Ben Gvir made in March, when he announced that all Jewish residents of Jerusalem – including those residing in occupied East Jerusalem – would qualify for gun licenses, adding 300,000 eligible Israelis in the capital.