Israel’s Smotrich Pushes Plan to Take Over Strategic West Bank Land

(MENAFN) Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich announced Monday that he has submitted a formal proposal to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to seize key territories across the occupied West Bank — a direct challenge to the European Union's latest sanctions targeting Israeli settlers.

"I presented the Prime Minister with a plan to seize strategic areas in the West Bank in Areas A, B and C," Smotrich declared via X, the American social media platform.

The announcement arrived within hours of EU foreign ministers approving a fresh wave of sanctions aimed at Israeli settlers and organizations accused of fueling illegal settlement expansion in the occupied West Bank — a move Smotrich dismissed with sharp condemnation.

"European hypocrisy knows no bounds," he said.

"No one will force the State of Israel to pursue a policy of national suicide," he added.

The finance minister further called for "strengthening the settlements" and "deepening control" over what he referred to as "Israel's land," warning that global pressure would not deter Tel Aviv's ambitions in the territory.

"The West Bank is Israel's security belt, and it is time to make it clear to the world that anyone who tries to weaken our control over it will face dire consequences," Smotrich stated.

The Oslo Accords — brokered between Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organization in 1993 — were designed to establish a pathway for Palestinian self-governance and an eventual Palestinian state. A subsequent agreement in 1995, known as Oslo II, partitioned the occupied West Bank into Areas A, B, and C. Area C, which remains under complete Israeli control, accounts for roughly 60% of the total territory.

Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Saar echoed the defiant tone, dismissing the EU's punitive measures and asserting that settlement expansion constitutes a "historical and moral right" for the Jewish people.

The pace of settlement construction has accelerated sharply since Netanyahu's government took office in late 2022, according to figures compiled by Peace Now, an Israeli left-wing monitoring organization. Today, approximately 750,000 Israeli settlers reside across the occupied West Bank — including roughly 250,000 in East Jerusalem alone, based on Palestinian estimates. All settlement activity is regarded as illegal under international law.

Since the outbreak of the Gaza war in October 2023, Israeli forces and settlers have dramatically escalated operations throughout the West Bank. Palestinian figures show that more than 1,000 Palestinians have been killed, approximately 12,000 wounded, and nearly 22,000 detained in the period since hostilities began.

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