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.”