Blinken arrives in Israel, Smotrich pledges to thwart Palestinian state

Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich pledged to prevent the creation of a Palestinian state, just as US Secretary of State Antony Blinken arrived in Israel, in part to advance a pathway for one.

“The countries of the world can announce day and night that they recognize a Palestinian state,” Smotrich told his faction in the Knesset on Monday.

“We will establish facts on the ground and guarantee that a Palestinian state will never be established,” the Religious Zionist Party (RZP) leader said.

He spoke just a day after Minister-without-Portfolio Benny Gantz who heads the National Unity Party, quit the emergency government, a step that brought it down to 64 seats, a slim majority of the 120-member Knesset.

The move did not collapse Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government but left him very little room to maneuver diplomatically, given that it left him more dependent on parties such as the RZP and Otzma Yehudit, with political agendas that run counter to that of the Biden administration.

Smotrich also spoke as the US was set to submit a resolution to the UN Security Council that backed a hostage deal, a Gaza ceasefire, and a two-state solution. His words, however, were aimed specifically at Gantz and the No. 2 in his party, MK Gadi Eisenkot.

Assigning the blame

He blamed them for the Hamas-led invasion of October 7, noting that in their past roles as IDF chiefs of staff and Gantz’s additional role as a former defense minister, they were responsible for setting a defense agenda that set the stage for that attack.

Smotrich also accused Gantz of supporting a Palestinian state, noting that “we succeeded in thwarting Gantz’s demand for the establishment of a Palestinian state in the government, and I am now acting in the field to thwart the establishment of a Palestinian state.”

Now that Gantz and Eisenkot have left the government, Smotrich said, he can act more decisively against the Palestinian Authority. It is the PA, he said, who is behind a campaign of diplomatic “persecution” that has brought Israel before the International Court of Justice.

Smotrich pledged to level additional punitive economic sanctions against the PA. He also promised to increase Israeli buildings in Area C of the West Bank, which he referred to as Judea and Samaria, and work more aggressively to demolish illegal Palestinian buildings in that area.