Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich on Sunday afternoon called on Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to fully occupy and settle the Gaza Strip, insisting that the end of the war against Hamas in Gaza must be accompanied by territorial expansion.
The “War of Revival” is the controversial name officially given to Operation Swords of Iron in October, viewed by critics as an attempt by the government to evade responsibility for failing to prevent the October 7, 2023, massacre that sparked the war.
Speaking at a ceremony marking the resettlement of the West Bank town of Sa-Nur, which was evacuated during the 2005 Disengagement from Gaza and the northern West Bank, Smotrich criticized members of the opposition who have demanded that Israel’s military accomplishments be followed by political and diplomatic achievements. They are pushing for ”surrender and defeat,” he said, while he wants a conclusion that “establishes military achievements and expands the state’s borders as defensible borders.”
Sa-Nur was one of dozens of settlements approved or retroactively legalized by the government in May 2025. The government recently decided to allow Sa-Nur to be connected to water and electricity grids.
According to the right-wing Israel National News site, 16 families moved into the reestablished settlement, setting up homes in temporary caravans.
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“Instead of handing over territory to the enemy,” Israel must “take territory from the enemy,” Smotrich said during the ceremony at Sa-Nur, arguing that unless Hamas complies with US President Donald Trump’s demand to disarm and demilitarize the enclave, Netanyahu should “order the IDF to immediately prepare for the full occupation of the Gaza Strip and the central camps, to establish Israeli control over the entire territory of the Strip, and to establish Israeli settlements there.”
A handout photo shows Otzma Yehudit MK Limor Son Har-Melech and activists from the pro-settlement Nachala group inside the Gaza Strip, on February 19, 2026. (Nachala)
“Without settlements, there will be no security,” Smotrich declared, adding that the war “must end with the expansion of the borders of the State of Israel.”
Smotrich has pushed hard to expand Israeli settlements and has a history of publicly calling on the prime minister to annex and settle territories in the West Bank and Gaza.
Pledging to work toward “the application of de facto sovereignty” in the West Bank, Smotrich in July 2024 insisted that Netanyahu annex the territory should the International Court of Justice (ICJ) declare Israeli settlements illegal.
“I hereby call on Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu: If the International Court of Justice in The Hague does decide that the settlement enterprise is illegal – respond to them with a historic decision of applying sovereignty to the territories of the homeland,” Smotrich told reporters at the time.
The ICJ subsequently declared in a non-binding ruling that Israel’s 56-year-long rule in “the Palestinian territory occupied since 1967” was “illegal,” and that it was obligated to bring its presence in that territory to an end “as rapidly as possible.”
IDF reservists operate in the northern Gaza Strip, in a handout photo issued by the military on January 17, 2026. (Israel Defense Forces)
In September, Smotrich unveiled a proposal for Israel to annex 82 percent of the West Bank in order to prevent the establishment of a Palestinian state. In January he called to correct the “sin” of the 2005 Disengagement from Gaza, declaring during a speech marking the newly recognized Yatziv settlement in the West Bank that Israel could not “wait another 20 years” to take control of the coastal territory.
“It is either us or them. Either full Israeli control, the destruction of Hamas and the continued suppression of terrorism over time, encouraging the enemy’s emigration abroad and permanent Israeli settlement, or, God forbid, squandering the efforts and costs of the war and waiting for the next round,” Smotrich said at the time.
Speaking at the same ceremony as Smotrich on Sunday, Tourism Minister Haim Katz says that the re-inauguration of Sa-Nur was “a moment of historical justice” and pledged that “in the place where we were uprooted, we will plant even deeper roots.”
The West Bank settlement movement recorded an unprecedented year in 2025, with records broken — and in some cases surpassed by wide margins — across multiple measures of expansion in the contested territory, according to recent figures from an anti-settlement watchdog.
An annual review by the left-wing Peace Now organization found that a record number of legal settlements were either approved or retroactively legalized in 2025; a record number of illegal settlement outposts were established; a record number of housing units were approved in the planning process; and tenders for the construction of a record number of housing units were published.
Jeremy Sharon contributed to this report.
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