Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich said in a lengthy statement on Saturday night that following the Security Cabinet meeting on Friday, he has lost confidence that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu seeks to lead the IDF to victory.
He called on the prime minister to reconvene the cabinet and announce that there will be no more pauses in the war, and no more partial deals.
Additionally, Smotrich threatened Netanyahu at Thursday’s cabinet meeting with going to elections, telling him: “As far as I’m concerned, we can stop everything and let the people decide,” according to a Sunday report by KAN.
"This time we proceed with a clear, sharp move toward a decisive outcome and victory - ending with Hamas’s complete surrender and the return of all the hostages at once, or with its defeat and total destruction. Annex large parts of the Gaza Strip and open its gates to voluntary emigration," Smotrich said, arguing that this is the only way Israel will completely win the war.
"The prime minister and the cabinet succumbed to weaknesses, let emotion defeat reason, and once again chose more of the same: to launch a military move whose purpose is not a decisive outcome, but only to pressure Hamas into a partial hostage deal, stating clearly that if Hamas agrees to a deal, we too will agree to stop again, withdraw again, and allow it to recover and rearm again. And so on and so forth," according to the finance minister.
The cost of war
He said that sending tens of thousands of soldiers to risk their lives to operate in Gaza City, and "to pay heavy political and international costs solely to pressure Hamas to release hostages and then to retreat" is immoral and illogical.
Until this time, "for the sake of unity, I stood behind moves that in my view were less correct. I remained in the government despite terrible decisions such as releasing terrorist murderers with blood on their hands and painful withdrawals from areas captured at great cost - so long as I assessed we were striving for a decisive outcome and victory."
"A war should be fought to win, to the end - even if it carries heavy costs. But a partial move meant only to push Hamas back into the negotiating room, in national humiliation and capitulation to terror - absolutely not," Smotrich continued.
Smotrich claimed that whenever there is a push for a deal on the table, the military does not operate at full force. What is worse of all, he said, is that if the state continues to allow Hamas the option of a temporary pause for the release of hostages, whenever it feels it is on the verge of collapse, it will ask for a "breather" and agree to a temporary deal.
"Then the war will again be halted, the fighters will again pull back, and their efforts and sacrifices will be squandered. And so it repeats, without a decisive outcome," he said, arguing that these partial deals create a cycle of conflict.