Israel is "closer than ever" to reoccupying the Gaza Strip and rebuilding settlements there, far-right Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich said Tuesday.
"We are closer than ever to rebuilding Gush Katif," Smotrich said at a conference in Yad Binyamin, central Israel.
Gush Katif, a bloc of 21 settlements in southern Gaza, was dismantled under then-Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's 2005 disengagement plan, which also saw the evacuation of four settlements in the northern West Bank.
"Where there are no settlements, there is no army; and where there is no army, there is no security," the extremist minister said.
Gaza is "an inseparable part of the Land of Israel," he claimed, calling for a larger and more expansive return than before 2005.
His comments came as the Israeli daily Haaretz reported that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu presented the Security Cabinet with a plan to seize parts of Gaza in stages, in a move aimed at preventing Smotrich from quitting the government after he threatened to resign over claims that Israel allowed humanitarian aid into the enclave.
The plan would reportedly give the Palestinian group Hamas several days to agree to a ceasefire in Gaza or face an Israeli takeover of parts of the territory until the group surrendered. The paper, citing a senior Israeli official, said the proposal had received backing from the US administration.
"We need the Israeli army to be inside and around Gaza to protect Israeli towns and to have the ability to securely operate anywhere inside Gaza, as we do in Judea and Samaria (West Bank)," Defense Minister Israel Katz said during a visit to a recruitment office in Tel Hashomer near Tel Aviv.
"The goal is to defeat Hamas. Neither its military wing nor its civilian wing should determine what will happen in Gaza," Katz added in his comments cited by a statement released by his office.
The Israeli army, rejecting international calls for a ceasefire, has killed more than 60,000 Palestinians in Gaza since October 2023. The relentless bombardment has devastated the enclave and led to a severe hunger crisis.
On Monday, Israeli rights groups B'Tselem and Physicians for Human Rights-Israel accused Israel of committing genocide in Gaza, citing the systematic destruction of Palestinian society and the deliberate dismantling of the territory's healthcare system.
Last November, the International Criminal Court issued arrest warrants for Netanyahu and his former Defense Minister Yoav Gallant for war crimes and crimes against humanity in Gaza.
