The last seven days of truce came about over the strenuous objections of the two most entrenched, ideological fundamentalists in the cabinet of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu—Itamar Ben-Gvir and Bezalel Smotrich. The two have a long track record of racist policies and statements, and over the last 12 months, their particular control over the instigations of violence in the West Bank against Palestinians there, has enabled, perhaps more than anything else, the racists within Hamas to recruit for a rage-driven spurt of violence.
Now, Smotrich has demanded that Netanyahu escalate in the West Bank, to “create wide security areas around settlements and roads, and prevent Arabs from approaching them.” The illegal Israeli settlements are to be augmented, extending their borders outward. When the Times of Israel on Nov. 27 asked Smotrich about the $105 million in new funds for increasing security in the West Bank, Smotrich explained: “There are 2 million Nazis in Judea and Samaria [the West Bank], who hate us, exactly as do the Nazis of Hamas-ISIS in Gaza.”
