Israel's Smotrich Calls for West Bank 'War' and Dismantling of Palestinian Authority Weeks Before Election

Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich told Ynet News in an interview published Sunday, September 27, that Israel should "go to war" in the occupied West Bank and "do there what we did in Gaza." He said Israel needs to dismantle the Palestinian Authority, which he called a "terror authority," and eliminate militants, weapons and tunnels in the territory.

Smotrich, who leads the Religious Zionist Party and holds administrative authority over much of the West Bank, made the remarks on Ynet's Hebrew-language podcast "120 and One." He also said Israel should annex Gaza territory up to the so-called Yellow Line, the demarcation between Hamas- and Israeli-controlled areas, and push into southern Lebanon as far as the Litani River, according to L'Orient-Le Jour. His stated reasoning: "If a war ends along the same lines where it began, what will deter the enemy from going to war again."

Israel's general election is roughly a month away, and Smotrich's party has been hovering around the electoral threshold, according to Ynet, prompting a merger with Moshe Feiglin's faction. His rival on the right, National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, has cemented himself as the dominant figure to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's right. Al Jazeera's own framing of the story asks directly whether Smotrich's war talk is "rhetoric or real threat" this close to a vote, a fair question the source record does not resolve either way.

The backdrop is real and documented. The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs recorded more than 1,330 settler-related attacks against Palestinians in the West Bank between January and late July, an average of roughly six incidents a day, the highest rate in about 20 years, according to reporting relayed by ua.news. A risk analysis from the law firm Steptoe, citing UN officials, said settlers and Israeli security forces have "often" acted in coordination against Palestinian communities, and cited a Haaretz editorial in which senior Israeli army officers warned government policy was giving settler violence a "tailwind." One reservist officer told Haaretz his unit could do little but watch.

Netanyahu issued an order in September to dismantle several settler outposts, reportedly under pressure from Washington after a US envoy visited an affected Palestinian town, per Steptoe's account. Steptoe describes that as a narrow exception to a broader government pattern critics call tolerance of settler violence, not a reversal of it.

Israeli authorities separately announced a full military closure of the West Bank for the Sukkot holiday, restricting Palestinian movement through October 3, according to ua.news, which also reported that hundreds of Israelis entered the Al-Aqsa Mosque courtyards in East Jerusalem under Israeli police protection during the same period, citing the Palestinian news agency Wafa.

Smotrich's defenders would point to a different set of facts: rising "security tensions" in the West Bank that he says justify a harder military posture, and his argument that the Palestinian Authority has failed to curb terror infrastructure, weapons and tunnel networks. In the same Ynet interview, Smotrich said he accepts "collective responsibility" for the October 7, 2023 Hamas attack while defending his government's wartime economic record. He also rejected any unity government that would include him as what he called a "fig leaf," and reiterated long-standing opposition to including the Arab Islamist party Ra'am in any coalition, accusing it of practicing religious concealment to accumulate political power.

The West Bank flashpoint is colliding with a separate diplomatic fight. Twelve countries including the UK, France and Canada issued a joint declaration objecting to Israeli settlement activity, and Ed Miliband, a senior UK Cabinet minister, announced a UK embargo on West Bank imports, according to the Daily Wire. Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Saar warned that "if Britain acts against Israel, Israel will act against Britain," and Smotrich posted on X calling for Britain's ambassador to be expelled, per the same report. Florida Republican Rep. Randy Fine has pointed to Florida's anti-boycott statute, warning British firms that comply with the embargo could lose state and local government contracts, the Daily Wire reported, though no such penalty has actually been imposed as of this writing.

Smotrich has been sanctioned by several Western governments, according to Al Jazeera, though the source record here does not specify which countries or under what legal authority. What happens next depends heavily on the outcome of Israel's election roughly a month out, and on whether Netanyahu's government treats Smotrich's comments as a policy proposal or, as some Israeli commentators suggest, as pre-election positioning aimed at a shrinking base of voters to his right.