The Ministry of Interior in the State of Israel is one of Government offices that is responsible for local rule, citizenship

Citizenship

Citizenship is the state of being a citizen of a particular social, political, national, or human resource community. Citizenship status, under social contract theory, carries with it both rights and responsibilities...

 and residency

Permanent residency

Permanent residency refers to a person's visa status: the person is allowed to reside indefinitely within a country of which he or she is not a citizen. A person with such status is known as a permanent resident....

, identity cards (Hebrew: teudat zehut

Teudat Zehut

Teudat Zehut is the Israeli compulsory identity document, as prescribed in the Identity Card Carrying and Displaying Act of 1982:Any resident sixteen years of age or older must at all times carry an Identity card, and present it upon demand to a senior police officer, head of Municipal or Regional...

), and student and entry visas.

Responsibility fields

• Providing citizenship
  Citizenship
  Citizenship is the state of being a citizen of a particular social, political, national, or human resource community. Citizenship status, under social contract theory, carries with it both rights and responsibilities...
  
   and permanent resident status.
• Issuing of entry visas and staying visas in the country.
• Inhabitants administration: personal registrations.
  • Issuing of [identity card].
  • Personal registrations such as birth
    Birth
    Birth is the act or process of bearing or bringing forth offspring. The offspring is brought forth from the mother. The time of human birth is defined as the time at which the fetus comes out of the mother's womb into the world...
    
    , marriage
    Marriage
    Marriage is a social union or legal contract between people that creates kinship. It is an institution in which interpersonal relationships, usually intimate and sexual, are acknowledged in a variety of ways, depending on the culture or subculture in which it is found...
    
     etc.
• Licensing the ownership of firearms.
• Local government, city council
  City council
  A city council or town council is the legislative body that governs a city, town, municipality or local government area.-Australia & NZ:Because of the differences in legislation between the States, the exact definition of a City Council varies...
  
  s and local councils
  Local council (Israel)
  Local councils are one of the three types of local government found in Israel, with the other two being cities and regional councils. As of 2003, there were 144 local councils in Israel, these being settlements which pass a minimum threshold enough to justify their operations as independent...
  
   supervision.
• Elections.
• Fire fighting and rescue services
  Israel Fire and Rescue Services
  The Israel Fire and Rescue Services is the Israeli state organization for fire fighting and rescuing. The organisation also provides rescue services from terror attacks, car accident and dangerous substance spillages, along with Magen David Adom, the National EMS. They are also involved in public...
  
   and emergency services.
• Associations.
• Planning and building supervising.

Staff wings

The Administration for Local Government and Administration

• Administration for Budgeting and Developing in the Local Authorities.
• Wing for Inspection in the Local Authorities.
• Administration of Planning.
• Administration of Borderchek points, Population and Immigration.
• Administration for Emergency Services and Special Tasks.
• Commissionership of Fire-Fighting and Rescuing.
• National Elections' Supervisor.
• National Unit for Building Supervising.
• Administration of Water.

Importance

The duty of the interior minister has been always a desirable duty in every government in the history of Israel, and the reason for that is that the Ministry of Interior has many authorities and much intensirt, particularly in designing the figure of the State of Israel.

Responsible for the population administration, the Ministry of Interior responsible for the personality registrations and decides who can immigrate to Israel in the framework of the [Rule of Return], and who can become a citizen in the framework of the Rule of Citizenship. In addition, the Ministry of Interior controls the status of permanent residents and issues visas to foreign workers.

Due to that, and due to its authority in the subjects of religion

Religion

Religion is a collection of cultural systems, belief systems, and worldviews that establishes symbols that relate humanity to spirituality and, sometimes, to moral values. Many religions have narratives, symbols, traditions and sacred histories that are intended to give meaning to life or to...

 and state

Sovereign state

A sovereign state, or simply, state, is a state with a defined territory on which it exercises internal and external sovereignty, a permanent population, a government, and the capacity to enter into relations with other sovereign states. It is also normally understood to be a state which is neither...

, the Ministry of Interior has become the main destination of parties

Party

A party is a gathering of people who have been invited by a host for the purposes of socializing, conversation, or recreation. A party will typically feature food and beverages, and often music and dancing as well....

 whose platform has a main part with these subjects (National Religious Party

National Religious Party

The National Religious Party ) was a political party in Israel representing the religious Zionist movement. Formed in 1956, at the time of its dissolution in 2008, it was the second oldest surviving party in the country after Agudat Yisrael, and was part of every government coalition until 1992...

, Shas

Shas

Shas is an ultra-orthodox religious political party in Israel, primarily representing Sephardic and Mizrahi Haredi Judaism.Shas was founded in 1984 by dissident members of the Ashkenazi dominated Agudat Israel, to represent the interests of religiously observant Sephardic and Mizrahi ...

, Yisrael BaAliyah, Shinui

Shinui

Shinui is a Zionist, secular and anti-clerical free market liberal party and political movement in Israel. The party twice became the third largest in the Knesset, but both occasions were followed by a split and collapse; in 1977 the party won 15 seats as part of the Democratic Movement for...

) that see the Ministry of Interior as a target and an excellent implement for executing their ideological outlooks in those subjects.

For the last years the Ministry of Interior has been criticized for arbitrary policies regarding foreign guest workers and Jewish converts. Interior bureaucrats are often accused of ignoring rulings by other state agencies and refusing to register converts as Jews.

In addition, The Ministry of Interior supervises all the local councils

Local council (Israel)

Local councils are one of the three types of local government found in Israel, with the other two being cities and regional councils. As of 2003, there were 144 local councils in Israel, these being settlements which pass a minimum threshold enough to justify their operations as independent...

 and due to that it has the power to appoint many workmen. A part of the Interior ministers used that for appointing faithful men and giving jobs to the party center.

Interior Minister

Since the second intifada, the Ministry of the Interior has been exercising stricter control over the disputed territories, most notably through limitations placed upon visiting professionals and academicians from the United States and other western countries. By controlling visas the Ministry of the Interior can regulate international presence in the region and control international involvement with the Palestinians.