Smotrich: Israel must vow to stay in northern Gaza forever unless hostages returned
Finance minister also rejects ‘surrender ‘agreement to end the war, weeks after calling for permanent settlements in Gaza; PM said to again reject ending war with hostage deal
Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich said Monday that Israel must reoccupy northern Gaza, and threaten to remain there indefinitely, in order to pressure the Hamas terror group to release the hostages in its captivity.
The far-right minister’s comments came amid an intense Israeli offensive in northern Gaza over the past month that has seen tens of thousands of Gazans displaced, as troops attack Hamas. They also came on the heels of dire warnings that the hostages who remain alive, some 13 months into their captivity, may not survive another winter.
“In order to return the hostages, we need to occupy the entire northern Gaza Strip, and inform Hamas unequivocally that if the hostages are not returned home safe and sound, we will apply Israeli sovereignty there and remain forever, and Gaza will lose a third of its territory,” Smotrich told reporters in the Knesset, ahead of his Religious Zionism party’s weekly faction meeting. He maintained that the threat would give Hamas the motivation to keep the hostages alive.
Smotrich also said, “With Hamas, we won’t be able to reach an agreement to end the war, because that would mean surrender and defeat.” Israel must, he said, “continue until the elimination of Hamas, until [the terror group accepts] terms of surrender.”
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu reportedly told the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee on Monday that “the only thing that Hamas wants is a deal that ends the war, and for the IDF to leave the Strip, in order to return to power.” The prime minister said that he was “not ready to allow that under any circumstance.”
The hardline stance came despite polls suggesting a large majority of Israelis support a hostage deal, even at the cost of ending the war. In a Channel 12 poll published over the weekend, 69 percent of respondents said it was more important to return the hostages than to keep fighting.
In his remarks Monday, Smotrich said that, “together with the separation of fronts [between Hamas in Gaza and the Hezbollah terror group in Lebanon], and the freedom of action and backing that we will receive, God willing, from the Trump administration, it will be possible to defeat Hamas and bring our hostages home, safe and sound.”
President-elect Donald Trump, who has called on the US to be more supportive of Israel’s “finishing the job” in Gaza and who reportedly set a timeline for Israel to end its campaign before his inauguration, will return to the White House on January 20, 2025.
Since Hamas’s October 7, 2023, attack started the ongoing war, Smotrich has repeatedly endorsed calls for Israel to annex the Gaza Strip and reestablish Israeli settlements there.
Last month, he attended an event at which speakers called for reestablishing settlements, and some even called for Palestinians to be pushed out of the enclave. On his way to the conference, Smotrich said that the Strip was “part of the Land of Israel” and that “without settlements, there is no security.”
At another conference in late October, Smotrich called for Israeli sovereignty to be extended to the Gaza Strip, claiming that Israel’s war gains would dissipate without troops and civilians being posted there on a more permanent basis. He also indicated he believed Hamas’s attack could have been prevented had troops and settlements still been inside the Strip.
The most recent comments come during an intense Israeli offensive to root out a resurgent Hamas in the northern part of the enclave.
Last month, Israel ordered the entire remaining population of the northern third of Gaza, estimated at around 400,000 people, to evacuate to the south, and allegedly blocked humanitarian aid for weeks before allowing it back in, under pressure from the US and others.
COGAT, the Israeli Defense Ministry body in charge of humanitarian aid to Gaza, said the drop in the number of aid trucks in October was due to closures of the crossings for the Jewish High Holidays and memorials marking the anniversary of the Hamas attack that triggered the war.
The US sent Israel a letter on October 13, warning that it had 30 days to take a list of steps to increase the aid or risk being out of compliance with US law, which bars the transfer of offensive weapons to countries that block access to humanitarian aid.
In the letter, the US reportedly demanded Israel clarify that it is not seeking to “isolate northern Gaza,” through the implementation of the so-called General’s Plan.
The plan, which the IDF has insisted it is not carrying out, envisions the military laying siege to northern Gaza in order to prevent the resurgence of Hamas. The US asked Netanyahu to publicly disavow the plan, but the premier declined to do so, given pressure from his far-right coalition partners, a US official told The Times of Israel last month.
It is believed that 97 of the 251 hostages abducted by Hamas in its October 7 attack remain in Gaza, including the bodies of at least 34 confirmed dead by the IDF. Hamas is also holding two Israeli civilians who entered the Strip in 2014 and 2015, as well as the bodies of two IDF soldiers who were killed in 2014.
The Hamas-run Gaza health ministry says more than 43,000 people in the Strip have been killed or are presumed dead in the fighting so far, though the toll cannot be verified and does not differentiate between civilians and fighters. Israel says it has killed some 18,000 combatants in battle as of November and another 1,000 terrorists inside Israel on October 7.
Israel has also said that it seeks to minimize civilian fatalities and stresses that Hamas uses Gaza’s civilians as human shields, fighting from civilian areas, including homes, hospitals, schools, and mosques.
Israel’s toll in the ground offensive against Hamas in Gaza and in military operations along the border with the Strip stands at 378.
Jacob Magid, Jeremy Sharon and Times of Israel staff contributed to this report.
