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Bezalel Smotrich, Israel’s finance minister, during an interview in Tel Aviv, Israel on 5 December, 2024 [Kobi Wolf/Bloomberg via Getty Images]
Israel’s Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich has renewed his call for the occupation of the Gaza Strip and the establishment of a military government there, prompting sharp criticism from opposition leader Yair Lapid, who described the proposal as “delusional”.
According to the Israeli newspaper Maariv, Smotrich told a press conference on Monday evening that “the goal is to occupy Gaza, establish a military government, build Israeli settlements in the Strip, and encourage the voluntary emigration of Gaza’s residents”.
His remarks come despite the implementation last October of a plan promoted by US President Donald Trump aimed at ending the war in Gaza. Smotrich, a leading figure on the far right, has consistently advocated for Israeli control over the territory.
Lapid responded by accusing the minister of living “in a fantasy world”. He said Smotrich appeared disconnected from current realities on the ground.
“There are 30,000 Hamas militants in Gaza, and the Peace Council includes Turkey and Qatar,” Lapid said, adding that the technocratic body established to administer Gaza was, in practice, under the authority of the Palestinian Authority.
He also pointed to the reopening of the Rafah crossing, noting that Palestinian Authority officials were stamping passports of those entering Gaza.
“I have no problem with Smotrich living in a world of fantasy,” Lapid added. “Fantasy is legitimate — but why is he discussing it in the media?”
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Genocide denier and Current UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer is quoted that he supports Zionism without qualification. He also confirms that UK air force support has been essential in Israel’s mass-murdering genocide. Includes URLs https://www.declassifieduk.org/keir-starmers-100-spy-flights-over-gaza-in-support-of-israel/ and https://youtu.be/O74hZCKKdpAKeir Starmer objects to criticism of the IDF. He asks how could anyone object to them starving people to death, forced marches like the Nazis did, bombing Gaza’s hospitals and universities, mass-murdering journalists, healthworkers and starving people queuing for food, killing and raping prisoners and murdering children. He calls for people to stop obstructing his genocide for Israel.Orcas discuss Genocide-supporting and complicit Zionists. Donald Trump, Keith Starmer, David Lammy, Rachel Reeves, Angela Rayner and Wes Streeting are acknowledged as evil genocide-complicit and supporting cnuts.
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Israeli authorities construct a new settlement road north of East Jerusalem, a Jerusalem governorate official reportedly said on February 5, 2026. [Issam Rimawi – Anadolu Agency]
The Israeli government approved a proposal on Sunday to register large areas of the occupied West Bank as “state property,” for the first time since the Israeli occupation of the territory in 1967.
The public broadcaster KAN said the proposal was submitted by far-right Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, Justice Minister Yariv Levin, and Defense Minister Israel Katz.
“The initial goal is the gradual settlement of 15% of Area C by 2030,” Israel Hayom newspaper commented ahead of the government decision.
Under the Oslo II Accord signed in 1995, Area A is under full Palestinian control, Area B is under Palestinian civil control and Israeli security control, while Area C, accounting for about 61% of the West Bank, remains under full Israeli control.
According to the paper, the main implication of the government decision is “the conversion of very large areas into state land, provided that no other ownership is proven.”
“In this sense, even in the absence of a political decision to apply the law, Israel significantly strengthens its hold on the land by registering plots that are not owned by other parties in the land registry,” it added.
The Oslo II Accord limits land registration by the Palestinian Authority to Areas A and B, while prohibiting it in Area C.
If approved, the Israeli government’s Coordination of Government Activities in the Territories (COGAT) will be responsible for organizing and registering land ownership in Area C.
The process includes issuing sale permits, collecting fees, and overseeing registration procedures, while preventing the Palestinian Authority from carrying out such tasks in those areas.
The move is part of a series of measures approved by Israel’s Security Cabinet last week aimed at expanding illegal settlement building and increasing Tel Aviv’s control of the occupied West Bank.
According to Israeli media, the measures include repealing a law that barred the sale of land in the West Bank to illegal Israeli settlers, unsealing land ownership records, and shifting authority for building permits in a settlement bloc near Hebron from a Palestinian municipality to Israel’s civil administration.
Israel has intensified operations in the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, since launching its military campaign in Gaza on Oct. 8, 2023. Palestinians view the escalation — including killings, arrests, displacement and settlement expansion — as a step toward formal annexation of the territory.
In a landmark opinion in July 2024, the International Court of Justice declared Israel’s occupation of Palestinian territory illegal and called for the evacuation of all settlements in the West Bank and East Jerusalem.
This work by Middle East Monitor is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
Genocide denier and Current UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer is quoted that he supports Zionism without qualification. He also confirms that UK air force support has been essential in Israel’s mass-murdering genocide. Includes URLs https://www.declassifieduk.org/keir-starmers-100-spy-flights-over-gaza-in-support-of-israel/ and https://youtu.be/O74hZCKKdpAKeir Starmer objects to criticism of the IDF. He asks how could anyone object to them starving people to death, forced marches like the Nazis did, bombing Gaza’s hospitals and universities, mass-murdering journalists, healthworkers and starving people queuing for food, killing and raping prisoners and murdering children. He calls for people to stop obstructing his genocide for Israel.Orcas discuss Genocide-supporting and complicit Zionists. Donald Trump, Keith Starmer, David Lammy, Rachel Reeves, Angela Rayner and Wes Streeting are acknowledged as evil genocide-complicit and supporting cnuts.
This work by Middle East Monitor is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License
Bezalel Smotrich, Israel’s finance minister, during an interview in Tel Aviv, Israel on 5 December, 2024 [Kobi Wolf/Bloomberg via Getty Images]
Internal disputes inside Israel are continuing to grow between the far-right government and the judicial system, highlighting the depth of the country’s political and institutional crisis. The latest tensions follow a sharp attack by far-right Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich against Supreme Court President Judge Isaac Amit.
In an official response issued yesterday, Amit described Smotrich’s remarks as “vulgar statements that crossed a red line”. He stressed that the comments would not affect his work or the performance of the judiciary.
Amit explained, in a message sent to members of the judicial system, that he had received dozens of messages since Monday afternoon from judges and court presidents. They said they felt personally insulted and warned that the remarks had damaged the standing of the judiciary.
He added that the attack was not aimed at him personally alone, but at the judicial institution as a whole.
The Supreme Court president said he thanked the judges for their solidarity and told them that, despite the seriousness of the remarks and their crossing of red lines, “they will not deter me from my path”.
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Keir Starmer objects to criticism of the IDF. He asks how could anyone object to them starving people to death, forced marches like the Nazis did, bombing Gaza’s hospitals and universities, mass-murdering journalists, healthworkers and starving people queuing for food, killing and raping prisoners and murdering children. He calls for people to stop obstructing his genocide for Israel.Orcas discuss Genocide-supporting and complicit Zionists. Donald Trump, Keith Starmer, David Lammy, Rachel Reeves, Angela Rayner and Wes Streeting are acknowledged as evil genocide-complicit and supporting cnuts.Vote Labour for Genocide.
Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich holds a map of an area near the apartheid colony of Maale Adumim near Jerusalem in the illegally occupied West Bank of Palestine, on August 14, 2025. (Photo by Menahem Kahana/AFP via Getty Images)
“The ONLY reason Israel gets away with this naked thievery is US military and political support,” said one observer.
Israel’s Cabinet on Sunday finalized approval of 19 new Jewish-only settler colonies in the illegally occupied West Bank, a move the apartheid state’s far-right finance minister said was aimed at thwarting Palestinian statehood.
Cabinet ministers approved the legalization of the previously unauthorized settler outposts throughout the occupied Palestinian territory, bringing the total number of new settlements in recent years to 69.
The move will bring the overall total number of exclusively or overwhelmingly Jewish settlements—which are illegal under international law—to more than 200, up from around 140 just three years ago.
Included in the new approval are two former settlements—Kadim and Ganim—that were evacuated in compliance with the now effectively repealed 2005 Disengagement Law, under which Israel dismantled all of its colonies in the Gaza Strip and four in the West Bank.
“This is righting a historic injustice of expulsion from 20 years ago,” Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich—who is a settler—said on Sunday. “We are putting the brakes on the rise of a Palestinian terror state.”
“We will continue to develop, build, and settle the inherited land of our ancestors, with faith in the righteousness of our path,” Smotrich added.
@PeaceNowIL Israel’s security cabinet decided (per media reports) to establish 19 new West Bank settlements, including Kadim and Ganim — settlements evacuated under the 2005 disengagement plan. More: https://t.co/ujJlLBtHGLpic.twitter.com/IxGjMtjSOr
Following an earlier round of approval for the new settlements last week, Palestinian presidential spokesperson Nabil Abu Rudeineh said, “All Israeli settlement activity is illegal and constitutes a violation of international law and international legitimacy resolutions.”
United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres earlier this month denounced Israel’s “relentless” settlement expansion.
Such colonization, said Guterres, “continues to fuel tensions, impede access by Palestinians to their land, and threaten the viability of a fully independent, democratic, contiguous, and sovereign Palestinian state.”
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and other Israeli officials—some of whom, including Smotrich, deny the very existence of the Palestinian people—have vowed that such a state will not be established.
Some doubted Trump’s threat, with Democracy for the Arab World Now (DAWN) executive director Sarah Leah Whitson reacting to the new settlements’ approval by posting on X that “the ONLY reason Israel gets away with this naked thievery is US military and political support.”
Israel seized and occupied the West Bank including East Jerusalem along with Gaza in 1967, ethnically cleansing around 300,000 Palestinians. Many of these forcibly displaced people were survivors of the Nakba, the Jewish terror and ethnic cleansing campaign that saw more than 750,000 Palestinians flee or be forced from Palestine during the foundation of the modern state of Israel.
Since 1967, Israel has steadily seized more and more Palestinian land in the West Bank while building and expanding colonies there. Settlement population has increased exponentially from around 1,500 colonists in 1970 to roughly 140,000 at the time of the Oslo Accords in 1993—under which Israel agreed to halt new settlement activity—to around 770,000 today.
Settlers often attack Palestinians and their property, including in deadly pogroms, in order to terrorize them into leaving so their land can be stolen. Israeli colonists have also attackedIsrael Defense Forces soldiers they view as standing in the way of their expansion.
In July 2024, the International Court of Justice—where Israel is currently facing a genocide case related to the Gaza war—found the occupation of Palestine to be an illegal form of apartheid that must be ended as soon as possible. The ICJ also ruled that Israeli settler colonization of the West Bank amounts to annexation, also a crime under international law. Article 49 of the Fourth Geneva Convention states that an “occupying power shall not deport or transfer parts of its own civilian population into the territory it occupies.”
As the world’s attention focused on Gaza during the past two years, Israeli soldiers and settlers have killed at least 1,039 Palestinians—at least 225 of them children—in the West Bank. This year, at least 233 Palestinians, including at least 52 children, have been killed so far, according to the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestinian Refugees in the Near East.
On Saturday, Israeli occupation forces shot and killed two Palestinians in the northern West Bank, including a 16-year-old boy, Rayan Abu Muallah, who the Israel Defense Forces said was shot after he threw an object at its troops.
Genocide denier and Current UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer is quoted that he supports Zionism without qualification. He also confirms that UK air force support has been essential in Israel’s mass-murdering genocide. Includes URLs https://www.declassifieduk.org/keir-starmers-100-spy-flights-over-gaza-in-support-of-israel/ and https://youtu.be/O74hZCKKdpAOrcas discuss Genocide-supporting and complicit Zionists. Donald Trump, Keith Starmer, David Lammy, Rachel Reeves, Angela Rayner and Wes Streeting are acknowledged as evil genocide-complicit and supporting cnuts.Keir Starmer objects to criticism of the IDF. He asks how could anyone object to them starving people to death, forced marches like the Nazis did, bombing Gaza’s hospitals and universities, mass-murdering journalists, healthworkers and starving people queuing for food, killing and raping prisoners and murdering children. He calls for people to stop obstructing his genocide for Israel.
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Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu speaks during a press conference in Jerusalem on December 9, 2024. [Photo by MAYA ALLERUZZO/POOL/AFP via Getty Images]
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu reiterated on Sunday that his government remains firmly opposed to the establishment of a Palestinian state, issuing the clarification amid intense criticism from far-right parties in his ruling coalition. The backlash followed a US-backed statement at the United Nations referencing a potential path towards Palestinian statehood.
The dispute erupted after the United States and several Muslim-majority countries endorsed a UN resolution supporting former US President Donald Trump’s plan to end the genocide in Gaza. The resolution includes language implying the possibility of an independent Palestinian state, provided that the Palestinian Authority undergoes significant reforms.
The clause triggered outrage among Israel’s far-right leadership, who had already voiced opposition to the Trump-brokered ceasefire in Gaza.
The political fallout now threatens the stability of Netanyahu’s coalition. National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir and Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich—both influential far-right figures—demanded that Netanyahu explicitly reject any reference to Palestinian statehood. Ben-Gvir warned he would withdraw his party from the government if Netanyahu failed to issue a clear, unequivocal statement.
“Our opposition to a Palestinian state in any territory remains unchanged. Gaza will be demilitarised, and Hamas will be disarmed, one way or another. I don’t need assurances, tweets or lectures from anyone,” Netanyahu responded defiantly.
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Keir Starmer objects to criticism of the IDF. He asks how could anyone object to them starving people to death, forced marches like the Nazis did, bombing Gaza’s hospitals and universities, mass-murdering journalists, healthworkers and starving people queuing for food, killing and raping prisoners and murdering children. He calls for people to stop obstructing his genocide for Israel.Vote Labour for Genocide.Orcas discuss Genocide-supporting and complicit Zionists. Donald Trump, Keith Starmer, David Lammy, Rachel Reeves, Angela Rayner and Wes Streeting are acknowledged as evil genocide-complicit and supporting cnuts.
