Israel’s recent move to deepen its control of the illegally occupied West Bank has drawn criticism from around the world, seen as a step towards the annexation of the Palestinian territory.
But for one of the men behind Sunday’s announcement, Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, it marks a definite step forward in his long-running journey to entirely rewrite modern history and international law, and claim the West Bank for Israel.
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The new rules announced by the Israeli government effectively make it easier for Israeli Jews to seize Palestinian land, and expand illegal settlements in the West Bank – allowing “Jews to purchase land in Judea and Samaria [the West Bank] just as they purchase [land] in Tel Aviv or Jerusalem”, as the statement put it.
That a finance minister would exercise control over occupied territory may seem strange to those unfamiliar with the workings of Israeli politics. But securing a foothold in the West Bank – which Smotrich and his settler movement believe they are biblically entitled to – was among his demands before agreeing to join Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s coalition government in 2022.
Little known internationally before the genocidal war in Gaza began in 2023, Smotrich and his fellow far-right figure, National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, have become regular fixtures in headlines and government sanction lists around the world. Each has sought to fuel the Gaza war, threatening to collapse the coalition at the first sign of any change in intensity, and pressing on with an illegal campaign of settlement and occupation.
“It’s not that Smotrich is particularly charismatic, or that he’s being driven by his base,” Orly Noy, journalist and editor of the Israeli Hebrew-language magazine Local Call, told Al Jazeera. “It’s more that he’s incredibly ideological and he’s smart,” she said, explaining how, over the years, Smotrich had painstakingly worked to have the mechanisms of West Bank governance shifted from the military to his own, civil control.
“There shouldn’t be anything surprising in this,” Noy continued.
“In his early days as a political nonentity, he published what he called his ‘Decisive Plan’,” she said, outlining the strategy published by Smotrich in 2017 whereby Palestinians in the West Bank would be left with three essential options: to leave, to accept Israeli domination, or to face annihilation.
“People, even those on the right wing, laughed at that and dismissed it,” she said, pausing. “They really shouldn’t.”
Religious Zionist upbringing
Bezalel Smotrich is, in every sense, a child of Israel’s settler movement, and one who draws ideological inspiration from Rabbi Zvi Yehuda Kook, a key figure in shaping religious Zionism in the 20th century.
Unlike the better-known American rabbi Meir Kahane, whose teachings have been invoked by figures including Ben-Gvir to justify violence, Kook’s ideas have underpinned what their adherents think of as a more high-minded form of ethnic supremacy and colonialism. This ideology casts Israel’s victory in the 1967 war as divinely mandated, but also adds a future Israeli settlement of Palestinian territory as the will of God.
By the time of Smotrich’s birth, in the illegal Golan Heights settlement of Haspin in 1980, Kook’s vision had led to the establishment of 148 settlements, including one in Beit El, where Smotrich attended the growing number of religious schools overseen by Israel’s increasingly mobilised settler movement, before going on to train as a lawyer.
However, though Smotrich was engaged in settler activism from an early age, it wasn’t until Israel’s 2005 unilateral disengagement from Gaza that he came to judicial attention after he was arrested that July with 700 litres (185 gallons) of petrol in his car.
Fourteen years later, the former deputy head of the Shin Bet domestic intelligence agency, Yitzhak Ilan, said that he had interrogated Smotrich – who he called a Jewish “terrorist” – after the arrest, and said the petrol was part of a plot to blow up cars on a major highway.
Despite his dubious background, Smotrich went on to win a seat in the Knesset in 2015, propelled in large part by his association with the influential settler organisation he founded in 2006, Regavim. Smotrich remained in the chamber through a shifting variety of right-wing alliances, briefly serving as transport minister for a year in 2019.
However, it wasn’t until 2022, after Netanyahu brokered a joint electoral slate between Smotrich’s Religious Zionist Party and Ben-Gvir’s Otzma Yehudit (Jewish Power) bloc, that the two finally got access to real power.
Far-right alliance
Both men have exploited their positions ruthlessly since, acting in concert to urge Israel’s genocidal war in Gaza on, irrespective of the political and international cost, while seeking to maximise the power of the government ministries under their control.
For Ben-Gvir, that has meant politicising the security force to such a degree that he now finds himself confronting Israel’s Supreme Court over it. Smotrich, for his part, has continued to channel millions to the settler movement, even as other ministries’ budgets have been cut, while settlements and settler violence have increased.
Smotrich has also continued to expand his influence over both Palestinian and Jewish residents of the occupied West Bank.
He was appointed head of the Settlements Administration under his initial deal with Netanyahu, and by June 2024, as global attention focused on the war in Gaza, additional authority was transferred from the military to the Smotrich-headed body.
“They’re different,” political analyst Ori Goldberg said of Smotrich and Ben-Gvir, who, too often, are lumped together. While both politicians rely on the fundamental idea of Jewish supremacy, Goldberg said, “Smotrich wants order. He has a vision for the future; Ben-Gvir isn’t interested in any of that. He’s about hate, racism and a keen desire to burn it all down”.
“The thing is, many Israelis feel the same way.”
Throughout, attacks on Palestinians by settlers have become more brazen and lethal – and conducted with even greater impunity. Even politicians, such as the parliamentarian Ofer Cassif, who have vocally objected to the settlers’ activities, are not safe from physical assault.
For Cassif, the blame extends beyond just the settlers’ patrons in government to the more mainstream political establishment, including self-styled opposition figures, such as Benny Gantz and Yair Lapid, who Cassif describes as turning a blind eye to both the settlers’ violence and Smotrich’s agenda.
“They don’t dare confront these neo-Nazi bigots in the West Bank, who are launching daily pogroms,” Cassif said.
“They’ve emboldened them. Now they’re attacking both Arabs and activists within Israel proper, and no one does anything,” he said. “Netanyahu, Smotrich and other ministers don’t interfere with these groups and, in return, these groups help finance them.”
Damage done
Whether Smotrich – to whom Al Jazeera reached out for comment, but from whom did not receive a response – will be able to cling to power long enough to fulfil his vision of annexation is unclear.
Observers, such as Goldberg, have their doubts. However, it is clear that Smotrich has strengthened his vision.
Announcing plans to establish a new network of illegal settlements across the West Bank, he boasted that the move would “bury the idea of a Palestinian state”, a territory he had previously described as being “a step away” from annexation.
While Smotrich may be advancing his political agenda, polls suggest that he and his Religious Zionist party will not muster the votes to enter the parliament after Israel’s next election, to be held before October.
Nevertheless, according to some, Smotrich’s continued presence in the Knesset no longer matters. The damage has already been done.
“I don’t know what the future holds for him,” Goldberg concluded. “Extremism [has] become part of the national conversation.”
