No more hostage deal talks with Hamas, Smotrich says

Netanyahu has not ruled out another deal with Hamas to free the 50 Israelis believed to remain Hamas captives, including 20 who are thought to be alive.

By Canaan Lindor, JNS

Bezalel Smotrich, the Israeli finance minister, said “unequivocally” that Israel will no longer negotiate with Hamas.

“There will be no more negotiations with Hamas on a deal for the release of hostages,” the minister, who leads the Religious Zionism party, said at a conference on Thursday night.

“From here on, the only possible deal is a total surrender of Hamas, the unconditional return of all our hostages, the dismantling of its armed force, the demilitarization of Gaza, the exile of the head of Hamas and to allow all those who want to leave Gaza to do so,” Smotrich said at the event, focused on the 20th anniversary since Israel pulled out of Gaza.

Smotrich’s party has opposed previous rounds of hostage deals with Hamas led by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s Likud party. The minister has nonetheless remained in the coalition.

His remarks came as Steve Witkoff, the U.S. Middle East envoy, is in Israel, in the wake of ceasefire negotiations between the Jewish state and Hamas in Doha law week.

Netanyahu has not ruled out another deal with Hamas to free the 50 Israelis believed to remain Hamas captives, including 20 who are thought to be alive. (JNS sought comment from Netanyahu’s office.)

“The left-wing protests and the media campaign benefitted Hamas and made it harden its stance, as did the leaders of Europe that blew wind into its sails and promised it that if it only holds out and waits a little longer, the reality in Gaza will remain unchanged,” when Hamas “will be gifted a Palestinian state” in September, Smotrich said.

The European countries have taken actions that take a hostage deal “completely” off the table, according to the Israeli minister.

“I say this also to those of us who thought it was the right thing to do. That’s it. It’s over,” he said.

“There’s a limit to how much we can humiliate our national dignity. There’s a limit to how long we can beg those Nazis for a deal. To how much we can compromise, more and more and more and to let them fool us.”

Smotrich cited several cabinet achievements, including creating or recognizing 50 Jewish communities in Judea and Samaria and a motion that passed the Knesset last week in favor of full Israeli sovereignty over that territory. He said he supports such sovereignty, including in Gaza.

Israel has neutralized much of Hamas’s military force in Gaza, Hezbollah, the Syrian army in the north, and “the head of the octopus in Iran,” Smotrich said.

The event came two days before the Jewish mourning day Tisha B’Av, which commemorates the destruction of the Jewish temples, among other tragedies.

Many of the event speakers spoke in disillusioned terms about what they said is Israel’s failure to eradicate Hamas more than 20 months after the start of its military campaign in Gaza.

Erel Segal, a prominent journalist who delivered the opening speech, drew attention to Arab organized crime, which he said “could, and left unopposed will, flip on us as a terrorist group, creating an existential threat.”

Segal also criticized Haredi leaders for not “recognizing the greatness of the hour” and heeding demands that young Haredi men enlist in the Israeli military.

Yariv Levin, the Israeli justice minister, also addressed the conference. “There is now an opportunity to complete the move of applying sovereignty in Judea and Samaria,” he said. Israel Ganz, chairman of the Yesha Council, called on the government to do so.

Ditza Or, whose son Avinatan is believed to be held in Gaza, drew on the biblical account of the prophet Elijah’s plea for Jews to decide whether to believe in God or adopt paganism, but to refrain from “living on the fence.”

Israel “is on the fence, fighting a war for almost two years now that should have ended long ago. We’re not winning the war, and we’re not surrendering,” she said.

“But if we’re not fighting, we’d better surrender and at least get the hostages back.” (She said that she prefers that Israel fight and defeat Hamas.)

“I have this animalistic drive to protect my son, and all I can think of is of him in the tunnels of hell,” she told attendees. “But I have another part of me that looks at this from above. I see Avinatan as an emissary, fighting the war of light to survive.”

Had no hostages been taken, “there would just be another round of hostilities, and we wouldn’t be reshaping the Middle East,” she said. “That fact that there are hostages allows us to do this.”