Hamas denounced Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich’s statement that “If in Gaza there will be 100,000 or 200,000 Arabs and not 2 million, the entire conversation on the day after will look different.”
The Hamas condemnation of the finance minister came in a press statement released to the terror organization’s English-language Telegram channel on Sunday night.
“The Zionist extremist minister Smotrich’s call to his Nazi government to displace two million Palestinians and keep only about 200,000 in the Gaza Strip, and to turn Gaza lands into gardens and parks for the Zionists, is a vile mockery and a war crime that coincides with an ongoing criminal aggression that the modern era has never witnessed,” the Hamas statement said.
“Let’s think out of the box,” Smotrich had said during an earlier interview with army radio, noting that he believed that Gaza could no longer be a “hothouse” wherein two million people are fed on hatred for Israel.
He added that there should be an international plan in which residents of the Gaza Strip would be voluntarily moved elsewhere.
“We have to control the territory, and to control the territory, there must be an [Israeli] civilian presence there,” he added.
Hamas: International community, UN should intervene
“This requires the international community, the United Nations and its institutions, to take an effective action to curb this entity, stop its crimes, and hold its leaders accountable for what they’ve committed against Palestinian civilians,” the Hamas statement continued. “Our people have spoken their word, and they will stand firm and steadfast in the face of all attempts to displace them from their land and homes, until full liberation and return.”
Earlier on Sunday, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said that discussion of the future of Gaza would have to wait until after the war was over.
Tovah Lazaroff contributed to this report.
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