Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich said that Israel must control the territory in the Gaza Strip and significantly reduce the number of Palestinian residents in Gaza.
In an interview to army radio, the far-right minister said that his "demand" was for the Gaza Strip to stop being a "hotbed where two million people grow up on hatred and aspire to destroy the State of Israel."
Without outlining his preferred method, Smotrich then suggested that the removal of around 90 percent of Gaza's residents would help achieve his goal. "If there are 100,000 or 200,000 Arabs in Gaza and not two million, the whole discourse about the day after will be different," he said.
The Religious Zionism party chairman then noted that in order to regain security, Israel must control the Gaza Strip, and that "in order to control the territory militarily over time, you must also have civilian presence there."
Smotrich's comments are the latest in a growing list of troubling remarks by Israeli lawmakers to seemingly support expelling Gazans en masse out of the Strip in order to ensure Israel's security after the war.
Last week, Likud MK Danny Danon said in an interview with Kan Bet radio that Israel "has to make it easier for Gazans to leave for other countries," explaining that this would in fact be a humanitarian gesture towards their neighbors.
"I'm talking about voluntary migration by Palestinians who want to leave," he said, adding that he has already been contacted by "countries in Latin America and Africa that are willing to absorb refugees from the Gaza Strip."
Last month, Intelligence Minister Gila Gamliel published an op-ed in the Jerusalem Post with a similar suggestion, calling on Western countries to take in the residents of the Gaza Strip, in an act of "voluntary resettlement." Shortly after the publication of the op-ed, the Israeli Embassy in Washington was forced to clarify that this didn't reflect government policy.
Most notably, at a meeting of Likud Knesset members last week, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu himself suggested that he sees mass transfer of Palestinian civilians out of Gaza a positive outcome of the war. In response to Danon requesting for Israel to set up a task force to deal with the issue, the prime minister explained that the main obstacle in Israel's way "is countries that are willing to absorb them, and we're working on this."
