After Smotrich US Visit, Trump to Approve West Bank Annexation, Gaza Ethnic Cleansing

Take action against Smotrich’s travel to the U.S. Sign the petition demanding an arrest warrant for him over his remarks on starvation and complicity in genocide in Gaza.https://t.co/BUJkp1rJpI pic.twitter.com/1KwiPj0GD0

— Apartheid Review (@ApartheidReview) March 8, 2025

Last week, Israeli finance minister and former terrorist, Bezalel Smotrich, had his coming-out party in Washington DC. There he was feted with a meeting with Treasury secretary, Scott Bessent, where they–among other things–plotted the destruction of the Palestinian people.

Lest you call this hyperbole, let’s not forget that Trump threatened to destroy the Palestinians in Gaza unless they unconditionally released all Israeli hostages.  He said if they refused “you are dead” and “it will be over for you.”  Needless to say, they refused to do so.  But the night…and the Trump administration…is still young.

Smotrich’s triumphant entry into the nation’s capital marks a dramatic turnaround in his political fortunes.  Like two past prime ministers and several Israel presidents, Smotrich has gone from terrorist to the heights of political power.

He was once arrested and imprisoned for weeks after he was apprehended with the makings of a bomb meant to explode on the Ayalon Highway. No one in the Biden administration wanted to be caught dead with him.  In fact, the human rights community and progressive Jewish groups demanded he be denied a visa to address an Israel Bonds event in Washington.  As it did in virtually every similar instance, Biden caved and issued the visa.

On his way into the Treasury Department last week, he gloried in his good fortune, being welcomed into halls of the Treasury, the locus US economic power:

“After four years during which, under the Biden administration, there was no ministerial-level meeting between the U.S. Treasury Department and the Israeli government, ​​we are now entering the Treasury Department,” Mr. Smotrich said. He called Wednesday’s meeting “very important.”

The joint US-Israeli statement following the meeting mentioned the usual blather of close collaboration on issues of mutual interest–blah,blah, blah.  Perhaps, it’s no accideent there was no mention of the elephant in the room–and certainly the main, if only reason for Smotrich’s visit–implementation of his project to eliminate the Palestinian people.

But after returning to Israel, Smotrich said the quiet part out loud:

“Various officials in the [Trump] administration told me again and again, ‘We will not allow 2 million Nazis to live just beyond the fence,’” he said, referring to Palestinians. “Not too long ago, it was taboo to speak about people leaving Gaza, but now the people who were crazy are the most realistic,” Smotrich added. “Not only is it realistic, but it’s the only plan that’s realistic.”

He also announced he was creating an “Office of Emigration” (what I’m calling the Office of Genocide), which will devise a scheme to expel all Palestinians from Palestine. In 1939, most of Europe thought the Nazis were the “crazy people” too, along with their plans for European Jews.

The Nazis’ initial project envisioned “voluntary emigration” to rid Europe of its Jewish ‘undesirables.’  It is no accident that Smotrich’s fascist state is moving in the same direction.  Remember what came after the Nazi emigration plan and what could follow Smotrich’s similar plan.

Smotrich has done the math (poorly) and has devised an efficient operation that will dispose of the Palestinians:

“Just to give you an idea—if we remove 10,000 people a day, seven days a week, it will take six months,” Smotrich said. “If we remove 5,000 people a day, it will take a year. Of course, this is assuming we have countries willing to take them, but these are very, very, very long processes.”

Even using his figures, he would only be ‘eliminating’ 1.6-million Gazans.  There would be another 1-million unaccounted for.  What’s the plan for them?

What countries would be willing to take any of them?  Jordan and Egypt have summarily rejected Trump’s plan to dump them in their laps.  Lebanon and Syria, who accepted many of the Nakba refugees, will not want anything to do with this.  Perhaps he imagines dumping them in the Saudi, Sahara, or Gobi Desert and leave the rest to Mother Nature and Darwin’s Law.

None of this is new. In 2017, he offered virtually the same plan in Knesset testimony. These were the choices for Palestinians:

1. Continue to live in the [occupied] territories that will be annexed to the State of Israel, without the right to vote for Knesset.  Their status will be as alien residents which, according to him, follows Jewish law which declares they must always be a bit inferior [to Jewish status].

2. Leave the country

3. Those who do not accept either of the two previous option: the IDF will know what to do.

When he was asked: “You’re also speaking of killing children and women from families who are not willing to accept these conditions?”  The answer was: “Yes.  When in war, as in war.”

So far, Smotrich’s vision of mass extermination is going according to plan.  An example of the absolute lunacy of the thinking of its Israeli supporters:

The idea from Trump and Israelis to relocate Gaza’s residents abroad is realistic, [MK Simcha] Rothman argued, because they need jobs and many aging countries around the world need to import young laborers.

Reducing the Palestine “problem” to an issue of economics, rather than human rights, is a common theme among Palestine deniers (even US presidents).

I can also imagine Adolf Eichmann declaring a new golden Aryan age of a Judenrein Europe:

“We must not squander the opportunity to take the right steps toward the new Middle East we are discussing,” [MK Yuri] Edelstein said.

A key part of the scheme, which Smotrich surely advocated with US officials is to formally annex the West Bank, making it easier to steal whatever Palestinian land hasn’t already been stolen.  As Basel Adra says in his film, No Other Land, the goal is to expel Palestinians from their villages, farms, orchards and pastures; replace them with Israeli settlements, and herd the expellees like cattle into major population centers, where they can be monitored more efficiently by Israeli security forces.

During the first Trump presidency, Israel proposed a similar plan. But after Arab countries–Saudi Arabia among them–protested, Trump ordered Netanyahu to shelve the plan.  Now, both Trump and Netanyahu can safely ignore such opposition.  In fact, several weeks ago the President promised major news concerning the issue. But he’s yet to do so.  Nevertheless, Israel is master of all it surveys in the region. It has undoubtedly received a green light to implement annexation.