JERUSALEM: Israel’s Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich on Thursday called on the government to begin annexing parts of the Gaza Strip if Palestinian militant group Hamas stands by its refusal to lay down its weapons.
The far-right minister, who has vocally opposed striking a deal with Hamas to end the nearly two-year war, presented his plan to “win in Gaza by the end of the year” at a press conference in Jerusalem.
Under Smotrich’s proposal, Hamas would be given an ultimatum to surrender, disarm and release the hostages still held in Gaza since the group’s October 2023 attack that triggered the war.
If Hamas refuses, Smotrich said Israel should annex a section of the territory each week for four weeks, bringing most of the Gaza Strip under full Israeli control.
According to Smotrich, Palestinians would first be told to move south in Gaza, followed by Israel imposing a siege on the territory’s north and center to defeat any remaining Hamas militants there, and ending with annexation.
“This can be achieved in three to four months,” he said.
His remarks come as Israeli forces press a major offensive aimed at seizing control of Gaza City — the territory’s largest — despite mounting concern for the fate of Palestinian civilians there.
The vast majority of Gaza’s more than two million people have been displaced at least once during the war.
Smotrich in his remarks called on Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu “to adopt this plan in full immediately.”
The Palestinian militant group condemned the proposal, saying in a statement that it constituted an “open endorsement of the policy of forced displacement and ethnic cleansing against our people.”
Smotrich is one of several far-right members of Israel’s ruling coalition to have expressed support for re-establishing settlements in the Gaza Strip, from which Israel withdrew troops and settlers in 2005.
A staunch supporter of the settler movement who himself lives in a settlement in the occupied West Bank, Smotrich authorized last week a major project in that territory which critics say threatens the territorial integrity of any future Palestinian state.
Smotrich has said that the settlement project in the area known as E1, east of Jerusalem, was intended to “bury the idea of a Palestinian state.”
Extremist minister Smotrich calls for Israel to annex Gaza
https://arab.news/nzjnq
Extremist minister Smotrich calls for Israel to annex Gaza
- Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich says if Hamas doesn't surrender Israel should annex a section of the territory each week
Syria’s Kurds hail ‘positive impact’ of Turkiye peace talks
- “The peace initiative in Turkiye has had a direct impact on northern and eastern Syria,” said Elham Ahmad
- “We want a dialogue process with Turkiye, a dialogue that we understand as Kurds in Syria”
ISTANBUL: Efforts to broker peace between Turkiye and the Kurdish militant group PKK have had a “positive impact” on Syria’s Kurds who also want dialogue with Ankara, one of its top officials said Saturday.
Earlier this year, the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) ended its four-decade armed struggle against Turkiye at the urging of its jailed founder Abdullah Ocalan, shifting its focus to a democratic political struggle for the rights of Turkiye’s Kurdish minority.
The ongoing process has raised hopes among Kurds across the region, notably in Syria where the Kurds control swathes of territory in the north and northeast.
“The peace initiative in Turkiye has had a direct impact on northern and eastern Syria,” said Elham Ahmad, a senior official in the Kurdish administration in Syria’s northeast.
“We want a dialogue process with Turkiye, a dialogue that we understand as Kurds in Syria... We want the borders between us to be opened,” she said, speaking by video link to an Istanbul peace conference organized by Turkiye’s pro-Kurdish opposition DEM party.
Speaking in Kurdish, she hailed Turkiye for initiating the peace moves, but said releasing Ocalan — who has led the process from his cell on Imrali prison island near Istanbul where he has been serving life in solitary since 1999 — would speed things up.
“We believe that Abdullah Ocalan being released will let him play a much greater role... that this peace and resolution process will happen faster and better.”
She also hailed Ankara for its sensitive approach to dialogue with the new regime in Damascus that emerged after the ousting of Syrian strongman Bashar Assad a year ago.
“The Turkish government has a dialogue and a relationship with the Syrian government. They also have open channels with us. We see that there is a careful approach to this matter,” she said.
Turkiye has long been hostile to the Kurdish SDF force that controls swathes of northeastern Syria, seeing it as an extension of PKK, and pushing for the US-backed force to integrate into the Syrian military and security apparatus.
Although a deal was reached to that end in March, its terms were never implemented.
“In this historic process, as the Middle East is being reorganized, Turkiye has a very important role. Peace in both countries — within Turkish society, Kurdish society and Arab society.. will impact the entire Middle East,” Ahmad said.
Syria’s Kurdish community believed coexistence was “fundamental” and did not want to see the nation divided, she said.
“We do not support the division of Syria or any other country. Such divisions pave the way for new wars. That is why we advocate for peace.”
