Israel's far-right finance minister on Wednesday said Gaza could be emptied of half its population through "voluntary" migration within two years.
Addressing a meeting of the Yesha Council, a committee overseeing a number of settlements in the occupied West Bank, Smotrich said Israel “can and must occupy the Gaza Strip”.
“We don’t need to be scared of this word [occupation],” he said.
“It’s possible to create a situation in which Gaza will have less than half its current population within two years."
He said the “voluntary migration” of Palestinians from Gaza could also serve as a “model” for the West Bank.
Israel’s ongoing war on Gaza has killed over 44,000 Palestinians, destroyed most of the enclave’s infrastructure, and prompted the issuance of arrest warrants by the International Criminal Court for Netanyahu, former Defence Minister Yoav Gallant as well as Hamas military commander Mohammed Deif (who has been pronounced dead by Israel).
Since the Hamas attack in October 2023 that killed nearly 1,200 people, Smotrich has been among those calling for the enclave to return to full Israeli control and for settlements to be constructed.
As well as finance minister, Smotrich has a role in the defence ministry overseeing illegal settlements in the West Bank and East Jerusalem.
In northern Gaza, Israel has been accused of committing ethnic cleansing through the Generals' Plan, which involves forcibly displacing Palestinians from the area and either killing or starving those who remain.
Israeli media last month reported evidence that such a plan was underway.
Smotrich has called for an aggressively expansionist Israeli policy and last month said the country should expand "little by little" until its borders reached Damascus.
"It is written that the future of Jerusalem is to expand to Damascus," he said in an interview for the documentary, In Israel: Ministers of Chaos, citing the “greater Israel” ideology, which envisions the expansion of the state across the Middle East.