Israel’s finance minister Bezalel Smotrich on Sunday called for a war against Palestinians in the West Bank , which it has occupied since 1967. The far-right leader also pushed for annexation of areas of south Lebanon and the Gaza Strip, which are also under the control of the Israeli military.
He was speaking on a podcast for Israeli news site Ynet. The line demarcates the areas under the control of Hamas and Israel.
“I think we need to go to war in Judea and Samaria (biblical names for the West Bank), to dismantle the Palestinian Authority that supports terror,” news agency AFP quoted Smotrich as saying. The Israeli minister said he wanted Israel to annex “as far as the Yellow Line in Gaza and as far as the Litani River in Lebanon”.
Smotrich’s far-right party advocates the annexation of the entire West Bank. These settlers are living in the region along with some three million Palestinians. The occupied West Bank area already houses 500,000 Israelis who live in illegal settlements in the Palestinian territory. The West Bank has witnessed heightened violence over the past 3 years, since a war broke out in the Gaza Strip following Hamas’s attack on Israel on October 7, 2023. Israel has also been pushing for its E1 settlement project, which involves the construction of more than 1,200 housing units in an area of the occupied West Bank between Jerusalem and the existing settlement of Maale Adumim. The Israeli attorney general’s office has now postponed the bidding deadline by a month, saying the move would reduce concerns that the tender could be used for election propaganda ahead of the October 27 vote.
Giving his reason behind the call for war and annexation, Smotrich said, “If a war ends along the same lines where it began, what will deter the enemy from going to war again.
Opposition to E1 Plan
Israel’s housing ministry opened construction bids for the project in July. The E1 settlement project has drawn criticism from Palestinian rights groups, European governments and other international actors, who argue that its construction could undermine the territorial continuity needed for a viable Palestinian state. Six European countries, including the UK and France, urged Israel in August to halt the project. Palestinian rights groups also challenged the plan in an Israeli court, warning that it could result in the eviction of hundreds of Palestinians. The project’s opponents maintain that expanding settlements in E1 would further isolate east Jerusalem from the rest of the West Bank.
Because of its potential impact on the territorial contiguity of a future Palestinian state, approved last year after decades of being frozen, the project has faced international opposition, particularly.
The court rejected their petition earlier this month, ruling that adequate legal safeguards were in place.
