Israel to promote settlement in the West Bank, Smotrich says

Israel’s far-right finance minister said yesterday that the occupation government would promote illegal West Bank settlements and punitive measures against the Palestinian Authority (PA) in response to Palestinian moves against Israel on the international stage, Reuters reports.

Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich said in a statement that the government supported his proposal.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office, which usually announces cabinet-level decisions, did not issue any statements and was not reachable for immediate comment.

Among the steps Smotrich said he was advancing was the revoking of “various approvals and benefits” for senior officials in the PA, approving new settlement buildings and retroactively sanctioning some Jewish settlements.

This comes days after a recording of a speech he gave earlier this month was leaked in which he spoke about preventing the occupied West Bank from becoming a part of an independent Palestinian state.

He discussed developing mass settler-only transit and road systems in the occupied West Bank over the next few years to encourage settlement.

“This is a revolution: this is how you bring a million people to Judea and Samaria,” Smotrich said, using the term by which Zionists describe the occupied West Bank.

The audio was provided to CNN by Israeli NGO Peace Now, which had a representative in the room during the speech, with Smotrich’s office saying earlier this month that the minister would be attending an event about Jewish settlement – and the goal was “preventing a terrorist state in the heart of the State of Israel.”

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