On Monday, Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich called for massive destruction in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, saying several cities should look like Gaza’s Jabalia.
“Funduq, Nablus, and Jenin must look like Jabalia,” Smotrich wrote on X. The Israeli military has almost completely destroyed the Jabalia refugee camp as part of an ethnic cleansing campaign in northern Gaza.
Smotrich’s call for escalation in the West Bank came after a shooting attack killed three Israeli settlers, including two women, near an illegal settlement. “The terrorism in Judea and Samaria and the terrorism from Gaza and Iran is the same terrorism – and it must be defeated,” Smotrich, a settler himself, wrote on X.
“Those who trust the Palestinian Authority to maintain the security of Israeli citizens wake up to a morning when terrorists are again slaughtering Jewish residents,” he added.
Smotrich said the Palestinian West Bank cities need to look like Jabalia so “Kfar Saba does not become Kfar Aza, God forbid,” referring to a central Israel town and a Gaza border town hit by Hamas on October 7.
A community note added to his post on X noted that Smotrich had previously called Hamas an “asset” to Israel. “Bezalel Smotrich is the one who said that Hamas is an asset on the Knesset channel, and therefore, the concept he opposes in the post is his own,” the community note reads.
The note was referring to comments Smotrich made in 2015. “The PA is a liability and Hamas is an asset,” Smotrich said. “On the international playing field in this game of delegitimization, think about for a second, the PA is a liability and Hamas is an asset. It’s a terrorist organization. Nobody will recognize it, nobody will give it status at the ICC [International Criminal Court] and nobody will let them push resolutions at the UN [causing us to] need an American veto.”
