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Sunday, October 19, 2025
Smotrich, Liberman join call to resume fighting in Gaza as ceasefire hangs in balance
Add ToI as a Preferred Source on GoogleSam Sokol is a former political correspondent at The Times of Israel. He was previously a reporter for the Jerusalem Post, Jewish Telegraphic Agency and Haaretz. He is the author of "Putin’s Hybrid War and the Jews"
Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich calls for renewed war in the Gaza Strip after terror operatives reportedly violated the ceasefire by firing on IDF troops.
“War!” the far right politician writes in a one-word post on social platform X.
Smotrich voted against the ceasefire deal in the cabinet and has previously argued that after the return of the hostages, Israel should “continue to strive with all its might for the real eradication of Hamas and the real demilitarization of Gaza so that it no longer poses a threat to Israel.”
Avigdor Liberman, the chairman of the hawkish Yisrael Beytenu opposition party, also calls for a show of strength against Hamas.
“In the Middle East, there is only one language — power. A true Iron Wall policy. Zero cracks, zero tolerance. Hamas is testing the limits because someone allowed it to. It’s playing games and dragging out the return of the fallen hostages and just recently — it violated the ceasefire and fired at an IDF force in an attempt to harm our heroic soldiers,” he tweets.
Yoaz Hendel’s newly formed Reservists Party, which is not in the Knesset, issues a statement saying that Israel cannot return to outmoded concepts such the need for a small army or the belief that Hamas is deterred.
“Now that the living hostages have returned, the State of Israel must state in the clearest way possible: If they do not disarm — we will fight and dismantle them. If they do not return the fallen — we will enter and retrieve them ourselves. If they violate the ceasefire? We will resume fighting,” the center-right party declares.
The Times of Israel Community.