Israel will not stop war until Palestinians displaced from Gaza and Syria partitioned, minister says
Palestinians displaced by the Israeli air and ground offensive sit in a makeshift tent camp at a landfill in central Gaza, April 2025
Middle East Eye reports on 29 April 2025:
Israel will only stop fighting when “hundreds of thousands” of Palestinians are forcibly displaced from Gaza and Syria is dismembered as a state, Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich said on Tuesday.
“With God’s help and the valor of your comrades-in-arms who continue to fight even now, we will end this campaign when Syria is dismantled, Hezbollah is severely beaten, Iran is stripped of its nuclear threat, Gaza is cleansed of Hamas and hundreds of thousands of Gazans are on their way out of it to other countries,” Smotrich said during a speech in the occupied West Bank.
His remarks underscore how calls for the forced displacement of Palestinians from the Gaza Strip have taken root within the Israeli government.
Israel resumed its war on Gaza in March after a brief ceasefire brokered by the US imploded. It has since been pummeling the enclave. Some diplomats and analysts say Israel appears to be moving towards the forced displacement of Palestinians by making the Strip uninhabitable.
Israel placed a ban on humanitarian aid entering Gaza on 2 March (over 50 days), and its intensification of military attacks has killed hundreds of civilians since the collapse of the ceasefire.
Israel has lobbied countries to accept forcibly displaced Palestinians after it invaded the enclave following the Hamas-led 7 October 2023 attack on southern Israel. The idea gained momentum when US President Donald Trump in February called for Gaza to be emptied and taken over by the US to build a luxury development.
Although Trump’s so-called “Gaza Rivera” plan has faded from the limelight, Israel has upped its attacks on the enclave, and the humanitarian situation has become dire.
Gaza is teetering on the brink of a famine, with the UN saying on Friday that no humanitarian aid or commercial supplies had entered the enclave for more than seven weeks. Over 52,000 Palestinians have been killed since the start of the war in October 2023.
But Smotrich’s remarks go far beyond the Gaza Strip, revealing a desire to reshape the entire Middle East.
Lebanon attacks
His call for Hezbollah to be “severely beaten” suggests Israel is set to remain ensconced in southern Lebanon, where Israeli troops occupy five strategic areas of high ground.