Finance minister urges Netanyahu to approve communities in northern Strip, while Trump administration vehemently opposes Jewish settlements in Gaza
Times of Israel
Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich said Monday that Israel has prepared plans to establish three settlements in the Gaza Strip, and all that is needed to move ahead with the project is Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s approval.
The Defense Ministry Settlement Administration, which Smotrich administers, ‘has completed the groundwork to establish three settlements in the northern Gaza area,’ he said in a statement.
Smotrich called on Netanyahu to ‘give the approval’ in order to ‘complete the mission that began on Oct. 7th.’
Smotrich said that the Israel Defense Forces should seize and declare ownership of the more than 70 percent of Gaza’s land that it currently controls and begin the process of building Jewish settlements there.
Smotrich has pushed hard to expand Israeli settlements and has a history of publicly calling on the prime minister to annex and settle territories in the West Bank and Gaza.
In April, he called on Netanyahu to fully occupy and resettle the entire Gaza Strip, insisting that the end of the war against Hamas in Gaza must be accompanied by territorial expansion.
Last month, Netanyahu said he ordered the IDF to take control of 70% of Gaza – well beyond the portion of the enclave in which Jerusalem was allowed to temporarily remain as part of an October 2025 ceasefire deal with Hamas.
The ceasefire halted the war triggered by the October 7 attack.
During Smotrich’s tour of the south, the father of an IDF soldier who was killed on October 7 heckled the far-right minister, accusing him of causing the deaths of hostages seized that day by opposing deals to end the war that would have seen them safely returned before they were eventually killed.
Smotrich on Sunday had taken credit for the return of all the hostages held by terror groups in Gaza, despite having voted repeatedly throughout the two-year war in the Strip against deals that would have seen them released earlier.
His remarks provoked outrage from former hostages and the bereaved families of hostages.
As the minister delivered his speech, a father of one of the slain hostages stood up and began heckling him.
‘Get off the stage — you aren’t fit to be here,’ he shouted. ‘You should resign. Why haven’t you done that? Many hostages came back in coffins because you voted against deals for a ceasefire in exchange for captives’, he charged.
Responding to the protester, Smotrich declared that he had come to say ‘I understand your anger and I am here in order to make sure that Israel succeeds.’
Smotrich was forced to cancel a planned visit to Kibbutz Be’eri due to anger from its residents over his remarks about saving hostages, the Walla news outlet reported.
Rabbi Elhanan Danino, father of slain captive Ori Danino, noted in an interview that Smotrich opposed ceasefire deals.
‘People in the defense establishment explicitly told me that in the cabinet, Smotrich is the one who every day bangs on the prime minister’s table to prevent a deal and to continue the war,’ Danino told the Kan public broadcaster. ‘I pray that his day of reckoning comes swiftly.’
Smotrich consistently opposed, or gave only conditional support to, various proposals for hostage deals throughout the two-year war in Gaza, arguing that continuing the military offensive and overthrowing Hamas was more important.
He also threatened, on multiple occasions, to pull his far-right Religious Zionism party from the government if any hostage release deal was signed of which he disapproved.