Fundamentalist Bezalel Smotrich is stirring up his fellow citizens' desire for revenge following the Hamas attack on October 7. Chaos, God willing. As Finance Minister and Defense Minister in charge of the West Bank, Smotrich is promising them all-out war against the Palestinians, both in the occupied West Bank and Gaza, and is putting pressure on Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who has no choice but to stay as close to him as possible, to curb his initiatives.

On the evening of Thursday, November 2, the two men addressed the Israeli people in a joint television statement. After much resistance, Smotrich agreed to abandon his latest project, aimed at stifling the Palestinian Authority (PA) in Ramallah. He released more than €160 million in taxes that the Jewish state collected on behalf of the Authority at the borders of the occupied territories and then paid back to it. On Monday, the minister had assumed the power to refuse these transfers, arguing that Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas had not condemned the Hamas attack strongly enough.

By Tuesday, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken had told the Senate that his administration demanded immediate disbursement of the funds. Smotrich rejected these American objections. "I hear that there are those who think that while our heroic soldiers and commanders are sacrificing their lives for the defense of the homeland, we should transfer money to this despicable enemy in Judea and Samaria [the West Bank]," he stated on X, unfazed. "We do not repeat mistakes (...) that we paid dearly for."

On Thursday, however, Smotrich succeeded in withholding the taxes that Israel collected before the war at Gaza's borders and which the Palestinian Authority then distributes to the enclave's civil servants to pay their salaries. Israel has also released more than 3,000 Gazan workers who had been detained on its territory since the start of the war, without their whereabouts being known and in a legal limbo. The police began sending them back to the enclave that was under bombardment.

"It's crazy. Two arsonists want to ignite a third front," said former chief of staff Gadi Eisenkot on Thursday, in a rare statement to the newspaper Yediot Aharonot. The opposition member had become part of Netanyahu's war cabinet during the conflict. He was outraged to see Smotrich and his ally, National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir, fanning the flames of violence in the West Bank, in the midst of the war in Gaza, while Hezbollah threatens the northern border. "We're talking about 200 settlements, hundreds of kilometers of roads that will have to be secured. We'll have to triple the troops and fill Judea and Samaria [the occupied West Bank] with reservists. They have no understanding of Israel's security problems," said the general.

You have 55% of this article left to read. The rest is for subscribers only.