Notorious both in Israel and abroad, yet beloved as a visionary by his constituencies, Bezalel Smotrich is the far-right leader of Israel’s National Religious Party-Religious Zionism and Prime Minister Netanyahu’s current Minister of Finance. 

Ridiculed and underestimated abroad, Smotrich has consistently exploited the Gaza hostilities, in order to bring about the annexation of the West Bank to the pre-1967 Israel. 

A self-proclaimed racist and fascist, Smotrich has promoted the blockade of the Gaza Strip since October 2023. He calls for a “voluntary emigration” of the Palestinians from Gaza to other countries. His ultimate objective is to transform Israel from a secular democratic state to a religious autocracy ruled by the Jewish biblical law.

Restoring the Torah justice system

Smotrich has lived his life in Jewish settlements, which are illegal by international law. The descendant of a Ukrainian-Jewish family that lost most of its members in the Holocaust, he grew up in an Orthodox-Jewish and Zionist milieu. But it was distinctively Messianic. 

Studying in Mercaz HaRav Kook, Yashlatz, and Yeshivat Kedumim, Smotrich was educated by the apocalyptic ideals of rabbi Abraham Isaac Kook, the father of Messianic religious Zionism. His political career took off in the mid-2010s, when the political clout of the Messianic far-right Jewish groups began to be felt nationwide. In 2019 he campaigned for the Ministry of Justice, saying that he sought the portfolio to “restore the Torah justice system.” 

It is an old religious-Zionist goal, touted in the past by the violent Jewish-American rabbi Meir Kahane. It is premised on the idea that democratic institutions are a Hellenic, goy thing, whereas only the Five Books of Moses can serve as a foundation of law in a Jewish state. Smotrich’s extremist politics aim at replacing the secular rule of law with traditional Jewish law.

In 2021, Smotrich, emboldened by his growing popularity, declared that Israel’s first prime minister, David Ben-Gurion, should have “finished the job” and kicked all Palestinians out when Israel was founded. In his view, members of Israel’s Arab minority communities are citizens, but only “for now.”

Violence to undermine Israeli withdrawal from Gaza

In spring 2023, when Smotrich took over a large chunk of the administration of the West Bank, he did not condemn settler violence. Instead, he urged Israel to react “in a way that conveys that the landlord has gone crazy” and called for “striking the cities of terror and its instigators without mercy, with tanks and helicopters.” That became his rallying cry after October 7, 2023.

Gaza is personal to Smotrich. In the early 2000s, he saw Israel’s withdrawal from the Strip as blasphemy. During the protests against the Israeli disengagement from Gaza, he was arrested in 2005 while in possession of 700 liters of gasoline. 

According to Shin Bet, Israel’s domestic security, the arrest was motivated by suspicion that he was participating in an attempt to blow up Ayalon Highway, a major arterial road. He was held in jail for three weeks but not charged after he refused speak. 

Like all religious fanatics, Smotrich has walked his talk. He has a plan and he is determined to realize it. It isn’t a new plan. It is more than half a decade old. 

Once scorned as religious humbug, it is now becoming still another new fact on the ground. 

Smotrich’s “Decisive Plan” for Gaza

In 2017, Smotrich, then still a young Knesset member, presented his “Decisive Plan” in closed religious Zionist circles. It represented an endgame of sorts for the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. 

The plan portrayed the conflict as devoid of any reconciliation. It rejected partition. It shunned any idea of a Palestinian state, any idea of Palestinian presence. Smotrich envisioned a singular state from the sea to the river, for one nation only: the Jewish people. True to his beliefs, he built on biblical allegories, which to him were no allegories at all:

When Joshua entered the land, he sent three letters to its inhabitants: Those who want to accept [our rule] will accept; those who want to leave, will leave; those who want to fight, will fight….

When they have no hope and no outlook, they will leave, just as they left in 1948.

Since October 7, Smotrich has championed what he describes as a “humane” solution for Gazan non-combatants: a “voluntary” population transfer. 

The two-state model was a dead end. Smotrich’s solution was simpler: Eliminate the adversary, resolve the dilemma.

“Leave!”

A month after October 7, 2023, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken presented his outline of what America would not accept as the “day after” in Gaza:

No forcible displacement of Palestinians from Gaza. No use of Gaza as a platform for launching terrorism or other attacks against Israel. No diminution of the territory in Gaza and a commitment to Palestinian land governance for Gaza and the West Bank and in a unified way.

In light of the on-the-ground realities, Blinken was living in a parallel universe. Most Gazans had already been displaced, the attacks continued, the infrastructure had been leveled and the path was paved for mass starvation. 

To the Messianic far-right in Israel, the White House is a convenient asset in God’s plan for Israel; not more, not less. In their view, America is not just rich and powerful, but soft and manipulable. 

So, while the Netanyahu cabinet’s official emissaries paid tribute to their American sponsors by regularly bowing to liturgical phrases, such as a “two-state solution” and “no displacement,” they were tenaciously building the institutional framework for a singular Jewish state and for displacing more than 2 million Palestinians in Gaza. 

In Smotrich’s view, Arabs owned no land. Jews were the landlords. Palestinians were just short-term tenants. Jews stayed; Palestinians were visiting. In a while, the world will forget all about the West Bank and Gaza, even the terms themselves. Those lands will be Judaized and know by their Hebrew terms as Judea and Samaria, and Azza.

So, when Netanyahu entrusted Smotrich with the administration of the occupied West Bank, he did it deliberately and purposely. It was a signal to Palestinian Arabs: Leave!

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