Israeli Cabinet minister says army should ‘go to war’ in occupied West Bank

Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich said Sunday that the army should “go to war” in the occupied West Bank and “do there what we did in Gaza,” where nearly 74,000 Palestinians were killed and over 175,000 others wounded since October 2023.

“We need to go to war in Judea and Samaria,” Smotrich told Israeli news outlet Ynet, using the biblical name for the occupied West Bank, which is supposed to make up part of a future Palestinian state.

Asked how Israel should respond to security tensions in the territory, Smotrich said: “We should do there what we did in Gaza.”

He said the Israeli army should be instructed that there can be “no terrorist infrastructure” in the West Bank, including “no terrorists, no weapons and no tunnels.”

Smotrich also called for Israel to annex territory in the Gaza Strip up to the Yellow Line as well as a large chunk of southern Lebanon.

“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,” he said.

“If a war ends along the same lines where it began, what will deter the enemy from going to war again?” he added.