Israel opposition condemns minister’s call to ‘wipe out’ Palestinian town

Israel’s ultranationalist finance minister said the country should “wipe out” a Palestinian town where scores of Jewish settlers torched homes and cars during a rampage three days ago.

Bezalel Smotrich’s comments on Wednesday drew fierce condemnation from Israel’s opposition, and came as the far-right new government sought to push hardline initiatives on the death penalty and judicial reform through parliament. Police in Tel Aviv used stun grenades to disperse thousands protesting against the planned legal changes.

The tumult in Israel’s domestic politics has coincided with a surge in violence in the occupied West Bank, which intensified on Sunday as about 400 settlers rampaged through Huwara and surrounding villages, after a Palestinian gunman killed two settlers there earlier in the day.

Yehuda Fuchs, the major general who commands the Israeli military in the area including Huwara, conceded on Wednesday that the army should have prevented the settler rampage, which he described as a “pogrom”.

In the aftermath of the shooting, Smotrich, a settler with a history of anti-Arab rhetoric who heads one of the six parties in Benjamin Netanyahu’s coalition government, “liked” a Twitter post calling for Huwara to be “erased”.

Asked at a financial conference on Wednesday why he had done so, the finance minister, who also has sweeping powers over civilian life in the West Bank, responded: “The village of Huwara needs to be wiped out. I think that the State of Israel needs to do that — not, God forbid, private individuals.”

Yair Lapid, leader of the largest opposition party Yesh Atid, condemned Smotrich’s remarks as “incitement to a war crime”.

“Jews do not commit pogroms and Jews do not wipe out villages. This government has gone off the rails,” he wrote on Twitter.

Smotrich later claimed his words had been distorted and that he was not calling for vigilante justice.

In the wake of the shooting in Huwara, the government — widely seen as the most rightwing in Israeli history — said it would advance a controversial bill long championed by extreme-right national security minister Itamar Ben-Gvir that would introduce the death penalty for terror killings.

On Wednesday, the Knesset (parliament) gave preliminary approval to the bill, which has been roundly condemned by human rights groups as its wording means it would apply to Palestinians who kill Jewish Israelis, but not to Israelis who kill Palestinians.

Last week, a panel of UN experts urged the government to abandon the proposal — which must now clear further votes in Israel’s parliament before becoming law — saying that it was a “deeply retrogressive step” that would “further entrench two classes of criminal law in the state”.

Adalah, The Legal Center For Arab Minority Rights In Israel, also slammed the proposal, which it said was “an immoral bill that demonstrates the Knesset’s effort to establish two separate legal systems based on race”.

During a tempestuous parliamentary committee meeting on Wednesday from which several opposition members were ejected, lawmakers also advanced a bill that would severely limit the top court’s ability to strike down legislation.

The bill, which must now be voted on by the whole parliament, is part of a broader drive by the government to curb the powers of the judiciary that has sparked two months of mass protests in cities around the country.

At least 11 protesters were injured in Tel Aviv on Wednesday, as police used stun grenades, tear gas and water cannon to disperse a large-scale demonstration that formed part of a “day of disruption” against the planned legal changes.

Government officials argue that the reforms are required to rein in an activist judiciary that has used powers it was never formally granted to push a partisan, leftwing agenda.

But critics, which include the opposition, numerous former security officials, former central bank chiefs, economists, tech sector executives and even reservists from Israel’s elite military units, see the proposals as a politically motivated power grab that will eviscerate Israel’s checks and balances, weaken minority protections and damage the economy.