Israel’s far-right finance minister Bezalel Smotrich called Sunday for the annexation of parts of south Lebanon and the Gaza Strip and for Israeli forces to “go to war” against Palestinians in the occupied West Bank.
“I would like us to annex at least as far as the yellow line in Gaza and as far as the Litani River in Lebanon… because if a war ends along the same lines where it began, what will deter the enemy from going to war again,” Smotrich said in a podcast for Israeli news site Ynet.
Smotrich is the leader of a far-right party that advocates the annexation of the entire West Bank, which has been occupied by Israel since 1967.
Various Israeli political leaders, both in the ruling right-wing coalition led by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and in the opposition, have come out against the establishment of a Palestinian state. At least 1,110 Palestinians, including a number of militants, have been killed in the West Bank by Israeli soldiers or settlers, according to an AFP tally based on Palestinian official figures.
“His statements are an explicit call for escalation, annexation and displacement, aimed at undermining the prospects of an independent Palestinian state,” the Ramallah-based authority said in a statement.
