Yitzhak Wasserlauf

Wasserlauf was born on August 14, 1992, and grew up in a Religious Zionist family. Ynet reports that he was born in Jerusalem’s Old City.[1][10] By 2019, he was living in South Tel Aviv, and by 2022 he was married with three children.[11][12]

At 17, Wasserlauf was appointed deputy chair of the National Union party’s youth wing.[10] He served in the Golani Brigade through the hesder framework, which combined military service and yeshiva study.[11][10] From 2014 to 2019, he taught at the Oz VeEmunah hesder yeshiva in South Tel Aviv, which he helped establish with Rabbi Ahiad Ettinger.[10] Ettinger was later killed in a terrorist attack near Ariel.[10]

Before entering the Knesset, Wasserlauf served as chief executive officer of Otzma Yehudit and worked as a field organizer for the party, becoming a longtime associate of its leader, Itamar Ben-Gvir.[10] He helped build the party’s field operation and remained involved when it failed to pass the electoral threshold.[10] In the 2022 election, he was fifth on the joint Religious Zionism list, which included Otzma Yehudit, and was described as the party’s second figure after Ben-Gvir.[10]

Wasserlauf entered the 25th Knesset in November 2022. After the joint factions formally split, he remained with Otzma Yehudit and became chair of its Knesset faction.[1] During his early parliamentary service, he served on the Finance Committee, the Special Committee for Strengthening and Developing the Negev and the Galilee, and the House Committee.[1]

In December 2022, Wasserlauf was appointed to a ministerial role covering the Negev and Galilee and, in some listings, national resilience.[1] At 30, he was the youngest member of the newly elected Knesset and the cabinet’s youngest minister; contemporaneous profiles described him as a political newcomer and a party field-operations figure close to Ben-Gvir.[1][13] Sources use varying titles for his portfolio: some identify him as responsible for the Negev, Galilee, and national resilience, while others name development of the Negev and Galilee or the periphery, Negev, and Galilee. The available accounts do not explain the differences.[1][14]

Wasserlauf’s portfolio focused on development and community support in the Negev and Galilee. In April 2023, his ministry announced plans to more than double support for communities near the Gaza border compared with 2021–2022, with more than NIS 25 million planned over the following two years.[3] The announced projects included community-resilience initiatives, public buildings, a therapeutic hydrotherapy pool, and protection for Sderot’s cultural center.[3] Wasserlauf attributed a 39% increase in positive migration to the region to earlier investment.[3]

In April 2024, he criticized Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu over the government’s response to northern residents facing Hezbollah rocket fire. Wasserlauf said Netanyahu had promised more than two months earlier to pass a government motion establishing a directorate for northern residents, but that it had not been established; he called each further day of delay “a disgrace.”[6]

During a November 2024 discussion of a proposed Lebanon ceasefire arrangement, Wasserlauf argued that residents should not return to northern communities without adequate security and a prepared return plan. He called for a buffer zone under Israeli military control and opposed pressuring residents to return before conditions were safe.[4] He said he had spent more time in the north than at home during the preceding year, meeting evacuees dealing with emotional and physical difficulties, and described resilience-building as work with local authorities and community leaders.[4]

Wasserlauf also proposed a government resolution making Zionist values a guiding principle in policy, including land allocation and construction planning. The proposal’s explanatory text referred to Jewish self-determination in the “Land of Israel,” and Wasserlauf said his goal was to increase Jewish settlement in the Negev and Galilee.[7] The Attorney General’s Office objected over concerns about preferential treatment, while ultra-Orthodox ministers raised concerns about giving priority to people who had completed military or national service. After ultra-Orthodox parties objected, the vote was postponed.[7] The ministry had secured NIS 450 million in state-budget development funds for local authorities in the Negev, Galilee, and “young settlements.”[7]

On January 19, 2025, Otzma Yehudit’s ministers, including Wasserlauf, resigned from the government in protest of the hostage-release and Gaza ceasefire agreement.[8] The party opposed the end of the fighting and argued that the agreement compromised national security.[1][8]

After Otzma Yehudit announced its return to the coalition, the Knesset approved the ministers’ return on March 19, 2025, by a vote of 65 to 46.[9] Wasserlauf resumed his Negev and Galilee portfolio and pledged to residents of those regions that he would be “your voice, your messenger, your faithful servant.”[15]

Wasserlauf has emphasized accessibility and constituent service in describing his public work. In a December 2022 interview, he said he had moved to South Tel Aviv because he saw residents suffering without being heard. He described helping ordinary people as central to his work and said that, after publishing his phone number in his first Knesset speech, he received thousands of inquiries.[2]

Wasserlauf was third on Otzma Yehudit’s list for the 2026 election.[16] The Center for Israel Education characterizes Otzma Yehudit as far-right and ideologically associated with the policies of the outlawed Kach party; this is its description of the party, not an individual assessment of Wasserlauf.[16] A Jewish Virtual Library account of the election campaign reported that Ben-Gvir sought the National Security Ministry for Wasserlauf in a future government.[17]

In July 2025, Wasserlauf chased and apprehended a suspected thief in Tel Aviv’s Shapira neighborhood after bystanders shouted that the person was fleeing, then handed him to police.[18] He said it was the second time he had caught a suspect while serving as a minister and urged residents to remain alert and report suspects to police.[18]

Before the 2022 election, Wasserlauf said Otzma Yehudit sought the public-security portfolio with broad authority and advocated changing rules of engagement. He argued that soldiers should not have to fear later prosecution when entering combat.[10] In April 2024, he said that what he considered “total victory” over Hamas would include entering Rafah, dismantling Palestinian factions, and returning to settle Gaza. He characterized Jewish resettlement there as punishment for the October 7 attack and said otherwise Israeli soldiers would have “fallen for nothing.”[6]

In July 2024, an interview about equal rights for married gay couples prompted criticism after Wasserlauf raised comparisons involving marriage between close relatives. He denied that he was equating the situations and said his point was that love alone could not justify every kind of relationship; his office later said he was criticizing the argument that love alone entitles a couple to rights, rather than comparing same-sex marriage with incest.[19]

Wasserlauf’s religious and political positions have also brought him into public focus at the Temple Mount, a politically and religiously contested site. In a 2022 interview, he described restrictions on Jewish prayer there as discriminatory, citing limits on Jewish visiting hours and broader access for Muslims.[10] He joined Ben-Gvir’s visit on July 27, 2023, and later posted that he hoped for the Jewish people’s “redemption” and “the building of the [Third] temple soon in our days.”[5] The visit occurred on Tisha B’Av, and police arrested 16 Jewish visitors and two Palestinians after disturbances at the site.[5]

On August 13, 2024, Wasserlauf accompanied Ben-Gvir to the Temple Mount on Tisha B’Av. INSS reports that the prime minister’s military secretariat gave advance written approval to their request to ascend, without conditioning approval on a promise not to pray there. Its account describes Ben-Gvir praying but does not say that Wasserlauf himself prayed.[14]