US Special Advisor Amos Hochstein is due to visit as Israel pushes for a diplomatic solution to avoid an all out war with Hezbollah as the IDF continued to deepen its war against Hamas in Gaza.
The war cabinet met with Mossad Chief David Barnea on Sunday night amid continued reports of a pending hostage deal, that would see the release of additional hostages.
Earlier in the day, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu promise that Israel would “eliminate Hamas, return our hostages and win the war.”
Separately, Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich in an interview with army radio promoted a day after solution to Gaza that was deeply at odds with the international community and the United States.
The best option for Gaza would be for the Palestinians to voluntarily immigrate to other countries, living only a small Arab minority that supports Israel, Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich told Army Radio on Sunday.
“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,” he said.
“Let’s think out of the box,” urged Smotrich who heads the
Religious Zionist Party. He is among those who believe it’s imperative to reconstruct Israel settlements in Gaza as the best way to ensure that terror groups such as Hamas do not return to that enclave to threaten Israel.
Gaza can’t continue to be a “hothouse” in which 2 million people are nurtured by hatred of Israel and fed with the idea of destroying it, he said.
“This is what has been happening in Gaza for 75 years,” he said.
Smotrich has made similar comments in the past
What needs to happen is emigration through an international plan, by which the residents of Gaza would be voluntarily relocated, Smotrich said.
“They [Palestinians] want to go. They have been forcibly held against their will in a ghetto for 75 years” in poverty and told that the only resolution to the situation is to destroy Israel and return to Haifa and Tiberias, Smotrich said.
“I think that we have solve the problem of Gaza and to rehabilitate its
He spoke of the fate of a coastal strip that has been home to 2.3 million, Palestinians most of whom have now been internally displaced as a result of the war.
Israel had withdrawn from Gaza in 2005, destroying 21 settlements there, handing the area over the Palestinian Authority. Hamas forcibly seized control of the enclave in 2007 in a bloody coup, forcing the departure of the Palestinian Authority’s Fatah party.
The United States and the international community wants to see a return of the PA to Gaza and has rejected any plans to relocate Palestinian residents. The PA, Egypt and Jordan have condemned any relocation plans.
Smotrich pushed back on Sunday, stating that the in the aftermath of the Hamas led October 7 attack against Southern Israel, in which over 1,200 people were killed and some 250 were taken hostage.
He explained that once the war is over and Hamas has been destroyed, settlements must be rebuilt.
“We have to control the territory and to control the territory there must be a civilian presence there,” he said.
He referenced Kfar Aza, one of the southern border communities targeted by Hamas on October 7, nothing that he would not want to see communities in central Israel suffer that same fate.
“We don’t want Kfar Saba to become Kfar Aza,” he added.
Reuters contributed to this article.
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