In 2017, Bezalel Smotrich, already a leading figure in the far right Jewish Home Party and now Israel’s finance minister, published his “One Hope Plan”. The two-state solution, he argued, to which liberal Zionists subscribe, if only as a convenient fiction to provide a cover for Israel’s Western backers, had to be discarded. “Peace will not emerge,” Smotrich argued, “so long as we maintain our hold on the starting assumptions that this land is fated to contain two collectives with conflicting nations aspirations…there is room for only one expression of national self-determination west of the Jordan River: that of the Jewish nation”. https://hashiloach.org.il/israels-decisive-plan/
He aimed, he declared, to end “the creeping erosion” of the Zionist project to acquire the whole of “Greater Israel” which had come about “not from consideration of justice but from surrender to Arab violence”. There were four main elements to the plan he proposed:
- Palestinians who forgo their national aspirations can stay in Israel and live as individuals in the Jewish state, though not as equals because he envisaged Palestinians being able to vote only in municipal elections, as is currently the case in occupied East Jerusalem;
- Those who insist on their Palestinian identity will receive assistance to emigrate;
- Palestinians opposed to such a Plan, will be killed: “The IDF, thank God, is a strong and astute army, with the will and capability to defeat terrorists within a short time frame: killing those who need to be killed, confiscating weapons to the last bullet, and restoring security to Israel’s citizens”;
- A programme of rapid settlement expansion: “establishing new cities and settlements deep inside the West Bank [which Smotrich as the current Israeli government, calls Judea and Samaria] and brining hundreds and thousands of additional settlers to live therein”.
The Jerusalem Post, a stalwart of Liberal Zionism, after warning that Smotrich’s plan could lead to the suicide of Israel, conceded, already in May 2023, that it was being implemented: “The results of all this are already evident. Nine outposts, illegal by Israeli and international law, have quickly received post-facto authorization; plans have been approved to build thousands of housing units across the West Bank; the Disengagement Law (which secured withdrawal from the Gaza Strip and five West Bank settlements and was based on a commitment by the United States administration) was repealed in the northern part of the West Bank; despite US protestations, the settlement of Homesh has effectively been reestablished; and vast new budgets have been approved for settlement infrastructures”.
A report by Meron Rapoport, an Israeli investigative journalist, provides a deeply disturbing insight (+972 magazine, 17 September) into how widely Smotrich’s fanatical racist ideas are shared at the highest echelons of the Israeli power structure, from military leaders to prominent academics. Rapoport cites, among others, the Forum of Reserve Commanders and Fighters spearheaded by Maj. Gen. (res.) Giora Eiland, which proposed just a few weeks ago: “ordering all residents of northern Gaza to leave within a week, before imposing a full siege on the area, including shutting off all supplies of water, food, and fuel, until those who remain surrender or die of starvation. Other prominent Israelis, in recent months, have also called on the military to carry out mass extermination in northern Gaza.”
It is, therefore, unsurprising that under the cover of its barbaric war on Gaza, Israel has unleashed an unprecedent level of IDF and settler violence in the West Bank. Let’s be clear: Israel’s war aim is NOT only to eliminate Hamas but to eliminate the Palestinians as a people. That is what defines its conduct, throughout historic Palestine, as genocidal.
According to the Norwegian Refugee Council, Israel destroyed 128 Palestinian structures in East Jerusalem between Jan. 1 and Aug. 2 this year; 19 of these were in Silwan, displacing 52 of the community’s residents. Meanwhile, since October 7, the Israeli government has approved or advanced the construction of thousands of housing units in Jewish settlements in East Jerusalem.
