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Posted: 2024-01-01T00:41:55Z | Updated: 2024-01-01T00:41:55Z

A senior Israeli official from Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahus right-wing government admitted on Saturday that the Gaza Strip is a ghetto and that Israel must reduce the enclaves Palestinian population the latest example of Israeli authorities plainly stating their goals for the future of Gaza and Palestinians.

In an interview with Israeli Army Radio , ultranationalist Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich said that his demand was for Gaza to stop being a hotbed where 2 million people grow up on hatred and aspire to destroy the State of Israel. He did not specify why Palestinian civilians in Gaza would aspire to destroy Israel.

According to a translation by Haaretz , the Religious Zionism party chairman also said that Israel must occupy and resettle Gaza in order to regain security.

If we act strategically, they will emigrate and we will live there. We wont let 2 million stay. With 100,000 or 200,000 Arabs in Gaza, the day after debate will be different, Smotrich said, as translated by an Israel analyst with the nonprofit Crisis Group . They want to leave, theyve been living in a ghetto for 75 years.

Smotrich agrees with @mashagessen that Gaza is a ghetto: \"If we act strategically they will emigrate and we will live there. We won't let 2 million stay. With 100-200K in Gaza, the 'day after' debate will be diff. They want to leave, they've been living in a ghetto for 75 years.\" https://t.co/jbUaFBClMF

Mairav Zonszein (@MairavZ) December 31, 2023","type":"rich","meta":{"author":"Mairav Zonszein ","author_url":"https://twitter.com/MairavZ","cache_age":86400,"description":"Smotrich agrees with @mashagessen that Gaza is a ghetto: \"If we act strategically they will emigrate and we will live there. We won't let 2 million stay. With 100-200K in Gaza, the 'day after' debate will be diff. They want to leave, they've been living in a ghetto for 75 years.\" https://t.co/jbUaFBClMF Mairav Zonszein (@MairavZ) December 31, 2023\n\n\n","options":{"_hide_media":{"label":"Hide photos, videos, and cards","value":false},"_maxwidth":{"label":"Adjust width","placeholder":"220-550, in px","value":""},"_theme":{"value":"","values":{"dark":"Use dark theme"}}},"provider_name":"Twitter","title":"Mairav Zonszein on Twitter / 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Smotrich agrees with @mashagessen that Gaza is a ghetto: "If we act strategically they will emigrate and we will live there. We won't let 2 million stay. With 100-200K in Gaza, the 'day after' debate will be diff. They want to leave, they've been living in a ghetto for 75 years." https://t.co/jbUaFBClMF

Mairav Zonszein (@MairavZ) December 31, 2023

Comparing the plight of Palestinians to the suffering of European Jews during the Nazi regime has been a taboo subject, though human rights organizations and scholars have drawn similarities between the two struggles , particularly after Oct. 7 . Just days ago, South Africa launched a case at the top United Nations court accusing Israel of carrying out the genocide of Palestinians in Gaza.

Earlier this month, prominent Russian American journalist and writer Masha Gessen was almost not awarded the prestigious Hannah Arendt prize in Germany after they published an essay in The New Yorker comparing Gaza to the Jewish ghettos of Nazi-occupied Europe.

For the last seventeen years, Gaza has been a hyperdensely populated, impoverished, walled-in compound where only a small fraction of the population had the right to leave for even a short amount of time in other words, a ghetto, they wrote in their Dec. 9 essay . Not like the Jewish ghetto in Venice or an inner-city ghetto in America but like a Jewish ghetto in an Eastern European country occupied by Nazi Germany.

Presumably, the more fitting term ghetto would have drawn fire for comparing the predicament of besieged Gazans to that of ghettoized Jews, they continued. It also would have given us the language to describe what is happening in Gaza now. The ghetto is being liquidated.