10/8/2025–|Last update: 03:59 (Mecca time)
The Israeli Finance Minister of Saturday Smotrich said – that he lost “confidence” that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is seeking to lead the army towards decisiveness and victory in the extermination war launched by Israel over the Gaza Strip since October 7, 2023.
Smotrich added – in a video clip posted on his account on the X -platform – that the decision of the mini security council (cabinet) occupying Gaza to restore Hamas to the negotiating table “is foolish and illogical.”
He also said that “sending thousands of soldiers and forming a threat to their lives in a military operation in Gaza and paying diplomatic and international prices only in order to form pressure on Hamas to release the hostages and then withdraw, this is ethical foolishness and irrational matter.”
“Unfortunately, for the first time since the beginning of the war, I feel that I cannot bear this decision or support him. I have lost confidence that the Prime Minister can or want the army to achieve this.”
Smotrich’s comments are a rejection of the Gaza -declared plan of Gaza two days ago, which is known to adopt forced displacement plans for Palestinians from the Strip with settlement in it.
“Graduate” plan
On Friday, the mini -security government in Israel approved a “gradual plan” to occupy the entire Gaza Strip, and the displacement of Palestinians from north to the south, and Netanyahu was presented in a move that was objections from security leaders because of its danger to the lives of Israeli prisoners and soldiers in the Palestinian sector.
Smotrich reduced the importance of this plan, and said that “Netanyahu and the cabinet decided to carry out a military operation whose goal is not to decide, but to put pressure on Hamas for a partial prisoner deal.”
He continued that “the mission in Gaza has not ended yet” and that “the goals of the war were not fully achieved,” calling on Netanyahu – wanted by the International Criminal Court – to “hold the cabinet again and announce unambiguously that there is no stopping in the middle anymore, and not a partial deal” and urged him to “go to a decisive and clear step of decisiveness and victory.”
Smotrich is constantly protesting the voices calling for the sufficiency of raids in the Gaza Strip, and demands the continuation of the war on the Strip until the displacement of the Palestinians from it in order to settle in it.
The day before yesterday, the Israeli newspaper Yedioth Ahronoth said that Smotrich rejects Netanyahu’s plan, and he wants in return “a complete and comprehensive occupation with the re -settlement in the Gaza Strip.”
Sharp fall
In the same context, the 14 Israeli private channel quoted a senior official in the “Religious Zionism” party – which is led by Smotrich – as saying that the cabinet decision “a sharp fall” is threatened with dismantling the government if the Gaza occupation plan does not change.
The plan approved by the Israeli government begins with the occupation of Gaza City by displacing its population of about a million people to the south, then cordoning off the city and carrying out incursions into residential gatherings, followed by the second stage and includes the occupation of refugee camps in the central Gaza Strip, which Israel destroyed large parts of it.
According to the United Nations data, 87% of the sector’s area is already under Israeli occupation or subject to evacuation orders, warning that any new military expansion will have “catastrophic repercussions.”
During the continuous extermination war in the Strip since October 7, 2023, the Israeli army occupied the entire Gaza City except for small areas, and it stayed for months before it retreated in April 2024 from most of its regions after announcing “the destruction of the city’s infrastructure in the city.”
From the entire Gaza Strip, parts of the city of Deir Al -Balah and the Central Governorate camps (Al -Nusayrat, Al -Maghazi and Al -Bayriq) remained by the Israeli forces, but they destroyed hundreds of buildings in them through air and artillery shelling, according to Palestinian officials.
With American support, Israel has been committing since October 7, 2023 genocide in Gaza, including killing, starvation, destruction and forced displacement, ignoring international calls and the orders of the International Court of Justice to stop them.
The Israeli extermination war left 61,369 martyrs, 152 thousand and 862 injured Palestinians, most of them children and women, and more than 9,000 missing, in addition to hundreds of thousands of displaced people and the famine, many of whom were children.
