The Israeli Finance Minister and leader of the far-right Religious Zionist Party, Bezalel Smotrich, reiterated his most radical stance this Monday, maintaining the need to "kill the idea of a Palestinian state" because, in his words, "it's either them or us."
"It's either them or us. There is no middle ground," Smotrich stated during an interview with the Israeli outlet JDN, in which he insisted that "we are killing the idea of a Palestinian state."
For Smotrich, "the Palestinian Authority must be dismantled." "The lines of Areas A, B, and C must be erased," he pointed out, alluding to the areas of differentiated administration between the Palestinian Authority and Israel in the West Bank established in the Oslo Accords.
"The terrible disaster of the Oslo Accords must be erased. We must take control of the entire territory," he concluded, advocating for Israel to assume complete dominion over the area.
The West Bank—including East Jerusalem—and the Gaza Strip came under Israeli military occupation after the 1967 war, along with the Syrian Golan Heights.
Currently, around 700,000 Jewish settlers reside in the West Bank, distributed among settlements that Israel considers official and others that are classified as illegal even by Israeli authorities themselves. According to International Law, the establishment of settlements in militarily occupied territories is considered a war crime.