Bezalel Smotrich: Qatar and Egypt won’t take part in the future of Gaza

Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich said on Monday that Egypt and Qatar won’t take part to what happens in Gaza in the future, considering that the only possible role for Egypt is to open its borders to the residents of the Gaza Strip.

This came in a speech at the beginning of a meeting of the Religious Zionism party that he chaired.

“I heard reports of proposals by officials in Egypt and Qatar regarding the continuation of the war, and the War Cabinet is supposed to discuss, among other things, these proposals,” Smotrich said.

He continued, “I want to say clearly that the War Cabinet doesn’t have a mandate to stop the war before achieving all its goals of destroying Hamas, returning all the kidnapped people and removing the threat from the Gaza Strip”.

During the last 24 hours, Israeli media spoke about a proposal from Cairo to exchange prisoners and impose a truce in the Gaza Strip, without official Egyptian confirmation.

However, Western reports said on Monday that the Palestinian Hamas and Islamic Jihad movements rejected the Egyptian proposal, while Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu renewed his assertion tonight that there will be no end to the war except after eliminating Hamas and returning the kidnapped ones.

During his speech, Smotrich went on to attack Egypt, “After years in which Egypt turned a blind eye and allowed the insane arming of Hamas as it’s now unfolding, the only intervention it can undertake in Gaza is to allow the residents of Gaza to go to it and through it to other countries”.

Smotrich added, “Neither Qatar nor Egypt will be a party to what happens in the Gaza Strip in the future… We’ll not repeat the mistakes,” he said.

He said, “Whoever believes that Israel will agree to a combination of a professional government in which Hamas and the Palestinian Authority participate under the guise of bureaucrats and technocrats is living in an illusion”.