Finance Minister and Religious Zionist Party leader Bezalel Smotrich noted his disapproval on Saturday night of the implementation of the hostage-ceasefire deal.
“Unfortunately, Prime Minister [Netanyahu] decided to give the green light to a bad, catastrophic deal. A deal that is dangerous to Israel’s national security and reverses many of the war’s achievements,” he said.
Referring to his party, the minister said, “We are resolutely opposed to the deal, and we have done everything in our power to prevent a bad deal that would endanger Israel.”
Despite this, Smotrich also said that. since the Hamas terrorist attacks on October 7, he and his colleagues “have been doing everything” to achieve the “main goal of complete victory and the return of the hostages.”
The minister said that he was ensured “through a government decision and in the security cabinet, the war would not end in any way, without achieving its full goals, foremost among them the complete destruction of Hamas in Gaza.
“We won’t sit in a government that will stop the war”
“We will not accept any excuses in this matter; we will not sit in a government that will stop the war and not continue until the complete victory over Hamas,” he continued.
Smotrich then referred to the current state of the Gaza Strip, saying that “it is ruined and disintegrated, uninhabitable, and it will remain that way. Don’t be impressed by the forced joy of our enemy. This is an animalistic society that sanctifies death. Very soon, we will erase their smile again and replace it with cries of grief and the wails of those who were left with nothing.”
He then added that his party demanded to “completely change the method of the war” by describing his “complete victory” as a “gradual takeover of the entire Gaza Strip” so that, according to the Finance Minister, “humanitarian aid will not reach Hamas as it has been until now.
