Smotrich Urges "War" in West Bank, Says Gaza Tactics Should Be Repeated in Judea and Samaria

Israel's far-right finance minister has called on the military to launch a full-scale campaign in the occupied West Bank, arguing that the destruction carried out in Gaza should be replicated in the Palestinian territory.

Speaking to Ynet News in an interview published on Sunday, Bezalel Smotrich said Israel needs to "go to war in Judea and Samaria, to do there what we did in Gaza, to dismantle the Palestinian Authority, which is a terror authority", using the biblical terminology Israeli officials employ for the West Bank.

The remarks came as Israeli authorities announced a comprehensive military closure of the occupied West Bank, attributing the sweeping restrictions on Palestinian movement to the Jewish holiday of Sukkot. According to the report, the tightened measures are scheduled to remain in force until October 3.

Smotrich was answering a question about how Israel should respond to escalating "security tensions" in the West Bank, a situation that has worsened markedly over the past year. The article notes that Israeli violence against Palestinians has been steadily increasing since the start of Israel's war on Gaza in October 2023, and that attacks have intensified significantly this year.

His comments included direct instructions to Israeli troops, which he framed as a message the military needs to hear: "Just as you dismantled Hamas in Gaza, there won't be terror infrastructure in Judea and Samaria." He added a three-part refrain: "No terrorists, no weapons, no tunnels."

The timing of the statements is significant, arriving as the West Bank experiences what rights groups and experts describe as an unprecedented wave of settler violence alongside sweeping army closures. The scale of the attacks has drawn repeated warnings that the situation risks spiralling further.

United Nations data cited in the report underscore the severity of the trend. The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) recorded more than 1,330 settler-related attacks on Palestinians between January and late July — an average of six incidents per day. The agency described the rate as the highest in roughly two decades.

The profile of those attacks has also changed. Settler groups, some of which are supported or protected by Israeli soldiers, have carried out shootings, besieged Palestinian homes, and engaged in other forms of communal violence. Experts quoted in the coverage have characterised some of these attacks as "pogroms".

Rights groups further warn that settlers are increasingly armed with military-issued weaponry and wearing military uniforms during attacks, a development that blurs the distinction between settlers and soldiers and complicates accountability.

Elsewhere in the region, the picture remained tense. In occupied East Jerusalem, hundreds of Israelis stormed the courtyards of the Al-Aqsa Mosque compound on Sunday under heavy police protection. The Palestinian news agency Wafa reported that the Israelis entered through the Moroccan Gate and performed Talmudic rituals, while Israeli forces simultaneously tightened restrictions around the mosque and across Jerusalem's Old City.

Taken together, the closure of the West Bank, the surge in settler attacks, the storming of Al-Aqsa and the finance minister's call for war amount to a sharp escalation across several fronts at once. Smotrich's remarks go beyond the language of security operations, signalling an intention — at least in rhetoric — to dismantle the Palestinian Authority itself and to apply the model of the Gaza war to the West Bank.

The West Bank has been under military occupation since 1967, and the Palestinian Authority administers parts of it while lacking control over the territory as a whole. Israeli officials have repeatedly tied their military presence and restrictions to security claims, and the closure announced this week is framed officially around the Sukkot holiday, a period of elevated religious sensitivity during which the Al-Aqsa compound becomes a focus of attention.

Analysts caution that rhetoric from senior ministers shapes the political space for further action, and that open calls to repeat the Gaza campaign in the West Bank could affect the calculations of both the Israeli security establishment and the Palestinian leadership. For residents of the occupied territories, the immediate effects of the closure — travel restrictions, checkpoints and blocked access to farmland and markets — are likely to compound the pressure already created by a year-long intensification of attacks.

The international community has been watching developments closely, and the figures documented by OCHA have repeatedly been used to press for action. With settler attacks running at their highest level in about 20 years and the army's access routes curtailed through October 3, observers say the coming weeks will be a critical test of whether the escalation Smotrich appears to be advocating can be translated into action on the ground.