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Jun 01, 2023

Ben Gvir urges locking down Palestinian towns in cabinet meet; Gallant pushes back

National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir’s office has apparently begun leaking partial quotes from today’s cabinet meeting on the ongoing West Bank terror wave. According to the quotes distributed

National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir’s office has apparently begun leaking partial quotes from today’s cabinet meeting on the ongoing West Bank terror wave.

According to the quotes distributed to Hebrew media, Ben Gvir calls during the meeting for the IDF to impose closures and partial lockdowns of Palestinian villages, in addition to erecting more checkpoints throughout the West Bank, rescinding entry permits for Palestinian laborers, carrying out targeted assassination of Palestinian terror leaders in the West Bank and further tightening the conditions of Palestinian security prisoners in Israeli jails.

Defense Minister Yoav Gallant appears to push back. “There is a danger of friction and you have to pay attention to it. It used to be a few dozen [terrorists] and today it is already hundreds,” he says, explaining that violent events have a tendency to snowball in the West Bank.

Gallant adds that the IDF has been stretched thin due to an uptick in settler violence and Palestinian terror groups have exploited this weakness to carry out more attacks.

Responding to far-right coalition lawmakers’ attacks on IDF chiefs, Gallant says, “These soldiers protect the [West Bank] highways used by these members of Knesset to then go to news network studios and attack [the IDF commanders].”

Ben Gvir fires back, saying, “I feel like I’m in an imaginary movie. People are being murdered, including a mother in front of her daughter. A few days ago a father and his son were gunned down, and you keep talking about the danger of friction and the danger of [Jewish] nationalist crime. Are we crazy? I’m starting to think we’re in Switzerland, as if these are our only problems. This meeting is about terrorism. We need to come up with operative measures for what to do to combat terrorism and not deal with nonsense.”

A source familiar tells the Walla news site that the security establishment’s representatives in the cabinet meeting also pushed back against Ben Gvir’s proposals, insisting on continuing a policy of differentiating between terrorists and the rest of the Palestinian population, whose livelihood Israel has an interest in easing.

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