Backing off threat to quit coalition, Smotrich says entry of ‘minimum’ aid in Gaza won’t reach Hamas

Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich says assistance going into Gaza — now that Israel has okayed the resumption of aid — will not reach Hamas, defending his decision to remain in the government despite previous threats to bolt over the issue.

“This is not surrendering to pressure; it is doing the right thing to continue to focus primarily on destroying Hamas,” he declares in a televised statement, adding that “no aid is going to Hamas, period.”

The far-right Religious Zionism party leader stresses that he was the minister who insisted on halting the flow of “thousands of trucks of aid that Hamas was seizing [and selling], and from which it profited by over a billion dollars.”

However, while stopping aid for two and a half months “created very great pressure on Hamas and this is good,” such pressure “needs to be moderated so that it does not explode in our faces,” Smotrich explains, arguing that doing so is necessary “to dispel the lies of starvation.”

Under new arrangements that he insisted upon, he says, an alternate private mechanism will oversee the entry of the “minimum necessary… supply of food and medicines” for the Gaza populace, which will ensure “that the world does not stop us and accuse us of war crimes.” His comments run counter to officials who say the aid will be distributed by mechanisms previously in place until the new system is up and running.

“It will allow civilians to eat, for our friends in the world to continue to provide us with an international umbrella of protection against the Security Council and The Hague Tribunal, and for us to continue to fight, God willing, until victory,” Smotrich states.

“What will come in the coming days is a little bit to the bakeries that distribute pitas to people and public kitchens that provide a daily ration of cooked food. Civilians in Gaza will receive a pita and a plate of food and that is it.”

He hails the newly expanded IDF campaign in Gaza, saying that the army is now operating “with unprecedented power… not with intermittent raids, but capturing, cleaning out and retaining [areas] until Hamas is destroyed.”

“Along the way, they are destroying what is left of the Strip simply because everything there is one big city of terror. This is a tremendous change from what has been so far and, God willing, will lead to victory, the destruction of Hamas and the return of the hostages,” he says — adding that after the population of Gaza is relocated to the south of the Strip, it will be relocated abroad “as part of President Trump’s plan.”

Smotrich uses the pulpit to slam unnamed rivals who he says are trying to outflank him from the right, leaking material from cabinet meetings and briefing against him. He also denounces “the media and the left” who he says are seeking “to end the war, capitulate to Hamas and bring down the government,” echoing comments from Religious Zionism MK Zvi Succot earlier in the day.

It would have been more politically profitable to “have a competition about who is more right-wing” but “from the first day of the war I put all politics aside,” he claims.

Speaking some 20 minutes after Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu released a video defending the resumption of aid and explaining its necessity to continuing the military offensive, Smotrich nonetheless calls on the premier to “take responsibility” and “show leadership” by explaining the necessity of the renewed aid to the public and “not let rumors, leaks and irresponsible spin lead the agenda and sow confusion and fears in the public and among the fighters.”