Face to Face with Bezalel Smotrich 

You can’t wait for a new opportunity every time, and the number of surviving hostages is shrinking. It’s precisely now, between the two administrations, that we have to make a deal.

On the contrary. With Hamas on the verge of total collapse, now’s the time to force a surrender deal in which we get back all the hostages, not to extend Hamas a lifeline with a deal that stops the war in return for some of the hostages. Definitely not a deal in which we squander many of our military achievements, for which we paid a heavy price in blood. If I had my way, we wouldn’t be negotiating with Hamas at all. Our only contact with them would be through the sights of our brave soldiers’ tanks, planes, and artillery.

But we tried that already, and while we made significant achievements on both the northern and southern fronts, we’ve only been able to return a few of the hostages that way.

No. I say quite the opposite. We’ve been negotiating with Hamas the entire time, and that’s why we’ve been unable to bring back the hostages. If we said that there’s no negotiating and there’s no Hamas — that in our view, Hamas is an organization destined for destruction, not dialogue — then it’s very possible that Gazans holding the hostages would return them to us in return for financial rewards and safety guarantees for themselves and their families. We can’t expect to break their fear of Hamas even as we ourselves negotiate with it. The two are mutually exclusive.

Helping Gaza

As finance minister, you know better than anyone that the humanitarian aid is Hamas’s financial lifeline. How is it possible that for more than a year, you’re continuing to funnel humanitarian aid that is effectively fuel and oxygen for Hamas?

For a long period, former defense minister Yoav Gallant and the upper echelons of the IDF torpedoed alternative proposals for distributing the aid. Current defense minister Yisrael Katz took office, and he believes in the path I proposed. Still, I have to say that I feel that the army is dragging its feet on this matter. It’s not okay, and it’s not acceptable.

So what you’re essentially saying here is that despite the fact that there’s a defense minister who’s demanding that the army carry out the government’s position, the IDF under Chief of Staff Herzi Halevi is conducting its own policy?

This is a very problematic gray area. It’s not that they’re refusing orders, but they’re absolutely dragging their feet. In my view, this should have been solved many months ago, but certainly over a month after the prime minister, the defense minister, and myself attended a meeting at Gaza Division headquarters. We dealt with the matter in detail, a clear directive was given, and sadly, the matter continues to drag on. The solution is around the corner, and I hope it will happen in the coming weeks.