Smotrich: We’re working to ‘collapse’ the ‘evil’ Palestinian Authority

Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich says that the government is working to “collapse” the Palestinian Authority, during a speech at the funeral for Yehuda Sherman, 18, who was killed in the West Bank yesterday.

The police and IDF have said they are examining whether Sherman, a resident of an illegal settlement outpost, was killed deliberately. Smotrich and others have described the incident as “murder” and a terror attack.

“We are going in their path [of Sherman and his associates] to collapse the authority of evil and terror called the Palestinian Authority,” says Smotrich at the funeral, which took place in the northern West Bank settlement of Elon Moreh.

“We will wipe out the lines and the definitions, and the letters,” he says, referencing the division of territory and control in the West Bank between Israel and the PA into areas A, B, and C. “We will settle our land in all its parts.”

Gedalia, a 27-year old man from nearby Yitzhar, says in an interview that Sherman was fulfilling a “strategic mission” to expel Palestinians from the West Bank and increase Jewish settlement in the territory.

“He went with intense dedication, every day, he took his herd out [to pasture], to remove the enemy from all the territory there so that Jews will come back to this place,” says Gedalia.

“Today one of the most important actions in all of Judea and Samaria is to expel all the enemy from all the regions. You can count the number of Jews there [in the northern West Bank] on your fingers. Yehudah took this mission upon himself and that’s where he fell.”

Asked if he supports the calls for vengeance for Sherman’s death, and violence against local Palestinians, Gedalia says, “I’m very happy to hear such things. I’m happy to hear whenever the enemy has been harmed and feels less like the owner here, I’m very happy, yes… If only the state would do it, but if it doesn’t do it, these youths will.”