Smotrich calls for immediate return to war in Gaza

Israel’s far-right Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich has called for resuming the fighting in Gaza and the occupied West Bank.

His statements, made on a social media post, came after three buses had exploded in a parking area in Tel Aviv on Thursday night.

Smotrich said that the captive exchange that had taken place under the Gaza ceasefire deal had resulted in a “mass release of terrorists,” and that the truce has been “interpreted by our enemies as weakness.”

“Our response must be an immediate return to fighting and systematically crushing terrorism until it is destroyed, in Gaza and Judea and Samaria,” said the ultra-nationalist politician and leader of the Religious Zionist Party, referring to the occupied West Bank.