Israel's far-right Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich has admitted that he spent years pushing for Israel to cut off vaccines and humanitarian aid to Gaza during the COVID pandemic as a means of tightening the pressure on its population, a position he championed as an opposition lawmaker before rising to become one of the most powerful ministers in Netanyahu's government.
Speaking in a podcast interview, Smotrich said he had long opposed what he called the repeated rounds of fighting in Gaza, arguing instead that Israel should escalate its collective punishment of the Strip's more than two million residents. Smotrich, who was an opposition lawmaker and leader of the Religious Zionism party during the COVID years before entering government, said Israel should stop humanitarian aid, stop vaccines during the COVID period, and tighten the blockade. The admission amounts to a senior Israeli politician acknowledging that he advocated denying a besieged civilian population access to vaccines during a global pandemic, a measure that would have exposed Palestinians in Gaza to mass death from disease as a deliberate instrument of policy.
The comments came as Smotrich renewed his call on Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to approve the establishment of three settlements in northern Gaza, pressing his campaign to resettle Jewish Israelis in an enclave left in ruins by nearly three years of Israel's genocide. Smotrich, himself a settler living in the occupied West Bank, said on Saturday that the Israeli Defense Ministry's Settlement Administration was ready to begin work as soon as the green light is given.
He made the remarks in a post on X timed to the 21st anniversary of Israel's 2005 disengagement from Gaza, under which Israel unilaterally withdrew from the enclave and dismantled all 21 settlements there, along with four settlements in the occupied northern West Bank. Those four were Ganim, Kadim, Homesh and Sa-Nur. Smotrich said settlers had since returned to Homesh and Sa-Nur, while efforts were underway to re-establish Ganim and Kadim.
Smotrich said Israel's far-right government did not intend to stop at rebuilding the four settlements evacuated in 2005, but planned to establish a long chain of new settlements across the northern occupied West Bank to strengthen and entrench the settlement enterprise. He conceded, however, that these plans were not guaranteed, pointing to Israel's general election due in three months. He framed the vote as a choice between what he called a right-wing government that continues expanding settlements and what he described as a dangerous left-wing government that would dismantle settlements and outposts and pursue a political agreement with the Palestinians.
Smotrich first called for the establishment of three settlements in northern Gaza on 29 June, following a meeting with the mayor of the southern Israeli town of Sderot, near the enclave. Like National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir and other far-right ministers in Netanyahu's government, he has been among the loudest advocates of resettling Gaza, openly campaigning to colonize the territory even as its population is starved, bombed, and displaced.
