On Monday, Jordan condemned the Israeli government’s extremist efforts to change the status of the occupied Palestinian territories, the most recent of which was evident in Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich’s call to apply Israeli sovereignty to the West Bank and Gaza Strip.
On Sunday evening, during a conference held in occupied Jerusalem, Smotrich called for the application of Israeli sovereignty throughout the West Bank and Gaza Strip.
He said in a video clip that he shared, on Monday, on the “X” platform, “The land division agreements did not succeed and will not succeed, simply because they want the whole country,” in reference to the Palestinians.
He added, “The Palestinians who agree to adopt the resolution (annexing the West Bank and Gaza) will be granted the benefits of an Israeli citizen,” and “whoever refuses to do so will be displaced, and whoever rejects both matters will be treated as a terrorist.”
In response, the Jordanian Foreign Ministry said in a statement that it “condemns in the strongest terms the extremist, racist, inflammatory statements made by Smotrich, calling for the annexation of the occupied Palestinian territory, the expansion of settlement there, and the displacement of Palestinians from it.”
The Ministry considered these statements “a flagrant violation of international law and the inalienable right of the Palestinian people to realize their independent, sovereign state along the lines of June 4, 1967, with East Jerusalem as its capital.”
It stressed “the Kingdom’s rejection and condemnation of these inflammatory settlement calls, in flagrant violation of international law and UN Security Council resolutions, especially Resolution 2334, which condemns all Israeli measures aimed at changing the demographic composition, character and status of the Palestinian territory occupied since 1967, including East Jerusalem.”
The Jordanian Foreign Ministry stressed that “the racist ideology that appears in the statements of the Israeli Finance Minister is an extension of the extremist policy of the Israeli government, which continues its aggression against Gaza, besieges the northern Gaza Strip, and prevents the entry of food and medicine to its residents in an effort to displace them from their homes.”
Smotrich’s statements
At Sunday’s conference, Smotrich, leader of the far-right Religious Zionism party, said, “This is a historic opportunity that should not be missed in order to establish a new and true Middle East, where west of the Jordan there is room for only one national definition: the state of the Jewish people.”
Smotrich reiterated his opposition to the establishment of a Palestinian state in the West Bank, East Jerusalem and the Gaza Strip, and said, “Israel must free itself from misconceptions and make an unequivocal Israeli statement to the Arabs and the entire world that a Palestinian state will not be established.”
He called for “establishing new cities and settlements deep in the West Bank and bringing hundreds of thousands of additional settlers to live in them,” and he also considered that “Israel must extend its control to Gaza.”
Smotrich, who strongly opposed the dismantling of settlements and the withdrawal of the Israeli army from Gaza in 2005, said, “When there is no military presence for a long period, there is no security and there is an existential threat to the State of Israel and its citizens, and we must not allow this,” referring to the October 7 attack. /October 2023.
The Israeli Minister of Finance renewed his call for the displacement of Palestinians from Gaza, saying, “Those who do not want or cannot put aside their national ambitions will receive assistance from us to immigrate to one of the many Arab countries, where Arabs can achieve their national ambitions, or to any other destination in the world.”
He claimed that “the absolute majority of Gazans supported (the Islamic Resistance Movement) Hamas and the massacre that occurred on October 7.”
Smotrich added, “The Palestinians living in the West Bank will enjoy self-government at the local level and will manage their daily lives on their own through regional municipal administrations devoid of national dimensions.”
He continued, “For the sake of a better future, the United States, along with other Western countries, must overthrow the regime in Iran and eliminate its nuclear project that threatens the State of Israel and the entire Western world,” in his words.
It is noteworthy that the Israeli “Peace Now” movement estimates the presence of more than 720,000 settlers in the West Bank and East Jerusalem.
In parallel with the ongoing genocidal war in the Gaza Strip since October 7, 2023, the Israeli occupation army expanded its operations in the West Bank, while settlers expanded their attacks on Palestinians, their property, and their sources of livelihood, resulting in a total of 763 Palestinians being martyred and about 6,300 wounded, according to official Palestinian data.
While the genocide in Gaza resulted in more than 144,000 martyrs and wounded, most of them children and women, and more than 10,000 missing people, amid massive destruction and famine that killed dozens of children and the elderly, in one of the worst humanitarian disasters in the world.