The lead editorial today in the Israeli daily Haaretz, “Israel Wants to Turn the West Bank Into Rubble, Just Like Gaza,” cites the inhuman statements made by Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, leaders of the Council of settlements, and the heads of the local West Bank settlements councils after the Jan. 6 terror attack in the West Bank, to warn its readers:
”[T]he Netanyahu government is advancing a permanent military and perhaps civilian presence in Gaza, the settlement enterprise and its arms in the military and the government are working to obscure the differences between the West Bank and Gaza, with the goal of reversing the 2005 disengagement and the Oslo Accords.
“To the settlers in Judea and Samaria, `uprooting terrorism’ means expelling residents and demolishing homes and infrastructure. The goal: to impose Greater Israel apartheid in the occupied territories. If they succeed, they will put an end to any future possibility of a two-state solution and sustainable life in the region.” (“Judea and Samaria” are the extremists’ term for the West Bank.)
Smotrich used the Jan. 6 attack to announce that he has drafted plans to make the West Bank towns of “Al-Funduq, Nablus and Jenin look like Gaza’s Jabalya”—the once-crowded Palestinian refugee camp in northern Gaza which looks like a ghost town after the IDF leveled it in late 2024, driving out 96,000 Palestinians by force, killing 2,000 and arresting 1,500.