Netanyahu promised far-right Smotrich ‘extensive’ attacks on West Bank if he stayed in cabinet

Extremist minister who wants West Bank completely annexed did not resign alongside fellow fanatics over Gaza ‘ceasefire’

According to reports in the Israeli press, PM Benjamin Netanyahu promised right-wing extremist Bezalel Smotrich ‘extensive’ attacks on the occupied West Bank if Smotrich agreed not to resign from Netanyahu’s cabinet over the supposed ‘ceasefire’ in Gaza – and that attacks on Gaza will also resume at a ‘convenient’ moment.

Israel has intensified its genocidal tactics in the West Bank since the notional ceasefire began on Sunday – its murder of civilians in Gaza has not stopped although some freedom of movement has been restored, allowing Palestinians to look for loved ones murdered in Israel’s fifteen-month genocide – attacking medical staff and targeting ambulances.

Smotrich, an illegal settler and self-described fascist who has publicly called for the complete annexation of the West Bank and described the use of starvation against Palestinian civilians in Gaza as potentially ‘justified and moral’, has said of Palestinians that he wants them to have no hope of a state of their own but instead:

only three options: a life of subjugation under Israeli rule, emigration, or a martyr’s death.

Last November, leading Jewish figures in France publicly condemned Smotrich being allowed to enter France, where he spoke to a far-right pro-Israel conference to whip up “French-speaking Zionist forces to the service of Israel’s power and history”.

Israel has murdered and wounded hundreds of Palestinians in the West Bank since Sunday – an escalation of its habitual repression – and is currently besieging the Governmental Hospital and the refugee camp in the West Bank city of Jenin, seizing hostages and destroying access roads, while bombing and shooting in other areas of the enclave.

Smotrich’s fellow fanatic Itamar Ben-Gvir and two other ministers made a show of resigning this week over the Gaza ‘ceasefire’. Analysts have said that Netanyahu’s government was likely to collapse if Smotrich also quit, leaving Netanyahu open to prosecution and imprisonment over longstanding corruption charges. Netanyahu is again trading the lives of Palestinian civilians for continued power and impunity.

UK PM Keir Starmer has not mentioned Israel’s newest crimes in the West Bank or its ceasefire breaches in Gaza. Instead, he has allowed accused war criminal Israeli generals to enter the UK with immunity and is waging war on activists and journalists who expose Israel’s genocide.

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