Israeli minister calls for ‘more painful ways than death’ for Palestinians

A far-right Israeli minister has called upon the regime led by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to work out “ways for Gazans that are more painful than death” to break their morale and defeat them as the US military did with Japan.

Speaking in an interview with Israeli radio station 103 FM, Amichai Eliyahu said Israel must decide the battle by wreaking the morale of the Palestinians in the besieged territory, and causing them pain through destroying homes, breaking their national dream, and displacement.

The Israeli minister said the residents of Gaza should be left with no option but to immigrate to other countries as part of revenge measures against them in the wake of the surprise Operation Al-Aqsa Storm Gaza-based resistance factions launched in response to the regime’s decades-long occupation, oppression of the Palestinians and desecration of the al-Aqsa Mosque.

Eliyahu also censured minister of military affairs Yoav Gallant for the plan he developed for the post-war period, whereby civil affairs in the Gaza Strip would be handled by Palestinian parties not hostile to Israel. He argued that no group fits this description.

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In November, the Israeli minister called for dropping a nuclear bomb on Gaza.

Eliyahu belongs to the far-right Otzma Yehudit party, led by Itamar Ben-Gvir. The party supports building settlements, and regaining control of the Gaza Strip.

Earlier this month, the Palestinian resistance movement Hamas denounced as “a war crime accompanied by criminal aggression” the latest call by an Israeli minister for the Palestinian residents of Gaza to leave the besieged region in order for settlers to return to the area after the war.

Hamas, in a statement on Sunday night, censured Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich’s call to displace two million Palestinians and keep about 200,000 in Gaza as “vile mockery.”

The group said the international community and the United Nations must take decisive action to stop the crimes and hold Israeli leaders accountable for what they have done to the Palestinian people.

“Our people have declared their position. They will stand firmly and steadfastly in the face of all attempts to displace them from their land and homes, until full liberation of the occupied territories and return of all refugees,” the statement read.

Most Palestinians displaced from their homeland after the Nakba (Catastrophe), when Israel proclaimed its illegal existence on May 15, 1948, have ended up in neighboring Arab states.

Arab leaders have maintained that any latter-day move aimed at forced expulsion of the Palestinians would be absolutely unacceptable.

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