JERUSALEM, Nov 14 (Reuters) - A senior far-right member of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government said on Tuesday Gaza could not survive as an independent entity and it would be better for Palestinians there to leave for other countries.
Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, who heads one of the religious nationalist parties in Netanyahu’s coalition, said he supported a call by two members of the Israeli parliament who wrote in a Wall Street Journal editorial that Western countries should accept Gazan families who expressed a desire to relocate.
“This is the right humanitarian solution for the residents of Gaza and the entire region after 75 years of refugees, poverty and danger.”
Smotrich spoke during Israel’s invasion of the Gaza Strip, a blockaded coastal enclave ruled by the Islamist movement Hamas that is home to some 2.3 million people, most of them refugees after earlier wars.
The Israeli military has told residents of northern Gaza to leave their homes and head to the southern end of the Strip, where it said they would be safer, and said they would be able to return once the situation is stabilised.
However there has been little clarity about Israel’s longer term intentions, and countries including the United States have said that Gaza should be governed by Palestinians.
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