‘Vile mockery, war crime’: Hamas slams Israeli minister’s remarks on displacing Gazans

Tel Aviv, Jan 1: The Hamas on Monday lambasted the Israel’s far-right Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich over his remarks on displacing the Gazan population from the Gaza Strip.

“Zionist extremist minister Smotrich’s call to his Nazi government to displace two million Palestinians and keep only about 200,000 in Gaza and turn Gaza lands into gardens and parks for the Zionists, is a vile mockery and a war crime which coincides with an ongoing criminal aggression that the modern era has never witnessed,” the Hamas said on organization’s English-language Telegram channel.

The Hamas has also called on the International community including the United Nations to intervene in the matter and foil any moves in this regard by the Israelis.

Earlier, the far-right Israeli minister had called for the removal of 90 per cent of Gaza’s residents to achieve the security goals of Israel.

“If there are 100,000 or 200,000 Arabs in Gaza and not two million, the whole discourse about the day after will be different. The removal of around 90 percent of Gaza’s residents would help achieve the goal,” the minister said, during a radio interview, as a solution to Israel’s post-war security concerns.

Smotrich said that Israel must control the territory in the Gaza and significantly reduce the number of Palestinian residents in Gaza.

Media reports said that his “demand” was for the Gaza to stop being a “hotbed where two million people grow up on hatred and aspire to destroy the State of Israel.”

“Smotrich’s comments are the latest in a growing list of troubling remarks by Israeli lawmakers to seemingly support expelling Gazans en masse out of the Strip in order to ensure Israel’s security after the war,” media reports said.