Israeli Finance Minister Pushes Annexation of Lebanon Border and Gaza, Calls for West Bank Military Action

Israeli finance minister Bezalel Smotrich on Sunday urged the government to annex portions of southern Lebanon and the Gaza Strip and to launch a military campaign in the occupied West Bank. He said annexation should extend at least to the so‑called yellow line in Gaza – the boundary that marks the area already under Israeli control after the war that followed Hamas’s October 7, 2023 attack – and to the Litani River in Lebanon. Smotrich added that a war in Judea and Samaria, the biblical name for the West Bank, is needed to dismantle the Palestinian Authority, which he accuses of supporting terror. He leads a far‑right party that seeks to annex the entire West Bank, a territory occupied since 1967. The proposal finds support among many Israeli politicians, both in Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s coalition and the opposition, who reject the idea of a Palestinian state. Netanyahu faces a closely contested election on October 27, as he tries to retain power. The Palestinian Authority in Ramallah denounced Smotrich’s remarks as an explicit call for escalation, annexation and displacement, warning they undermine prospects for an independent state. Violence in the West Bank has risen sharply since the Gaza war, with at least 1,110 Palestinians – including militants – killed according to an AFP tally based on Palestinian figures, while Israeli sources record at least 49 Israeli deaths from Palestinian attacks or Israeli operations. Settler attacks on Palestinians have increased, often without legal repercussions. Netanyahu dismissed such settler violence as the work of a “handful of rioters.” More than half a million Israelis now live in West Bank settlements, considered illegal under international law, among roughly three million Palestinians.