Israeli minister calls for 'voluntary migration' of Gazans

Far-right Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich on November 14, 2023 [GIL COHEN-MAGEN/AFP via Getty Images]

Israel’s far-right Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich on Sunday called for encouraging the “voluntary emigration” of Palestinians in the Gaza Strip.

“We need to encourage immigration from there. If there were 100,000-200,000 Arabs in the Strip and not two million, the whole conversation about the day after [the war] would be completely different,” Smotrich told Israeli Army Radio.

“They want to leave. They have been living in a ghetto for 75 years and are in need,” added Smotrich, leader of the far-right Religious Zionism Party.

READ: Israel again turns down US request to transfer tax money collected in Palestine

Unless otherwise stated in the article above, this work by Middle East Monitor is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License. If the image(s) bear our credit, this license also applies to them. What does that mean? For other permissions, please contact us.