Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich on Monday claimed that it was “justified and moral” to block humanitarian aid to the Gaza Strip even if it causes two million civilians to starve.
At a conference in Yad Binyamin Smotrich said: “We bring in aid because there is no choice.
"We can’t, in the current global reality, manage a war. Nobody will let us cause 2 million civilians to die of hunger, even though it might be justified and moral until our hostages are returned.
“Humanitarianism in exchange for humanitarianism is morally justified — but what can we do? We live today in a certain reality, we need international legitimacy for this war.”
Smotrich also asserted that banning humanitarian aid from Gaza would likely allow hostages being held by Hamas to be released.
He added: “Everyone wants to bring the hostages back, but the deal only gets a minority of hostages and condemns the majority and therefore it’s not right and not moral and it endangers the nation.”
The far-right minister said he supports Israel resettling Gaza but has stated he does not want this to be one of the war’s goals. However, he did argue that if Israel had not pulled out of the region in 2005, the massacre on October 7th would never have happened.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has previously said that resettling in Gaza is unrealistic, which has angered his far-right coalition allies.
Netanyahu has already come under fire after the chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Court, Karim Khan, announced in May that he was seeking an arrest warrant for him and Defense Minister Yoav Gallant for “causing starvation as a method of war including the denial of humanitarian relief supplies.”
The Israeli government announced a blockade of Humanitarian aid to the Gaza Strip immediately after the October 7th attack in which terrorists killed over 1,200 people and took 251 hostages. But by the end of October, Israel allowed the entry of aid and increased the amount supplied at various points over the 10 months of the war.
Meanwhile, Israel has been highlighting its efforts to expand aid to Gaza and blamed the humanitarian crisis on aid agencies failing to properly distribute supplies as well as being unable to stop the looting of aid trucks by terror groups and gangs.
