{"id":22841,"date":"2026-02-23T15:19:23","date_gmt":"2026-02-23T11:49:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/ghodsnama.com\/mehrnews_en\/24504453889121277780\/"},"modified":"2026-02-23T15:19:23","modified_gmt":"2026-02-23T11:49:23","slug":"24504453889121277780","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ghodsnama.com\/mehrnews_en\/24504453889121277780\/","title":{"rendered":"Controversial Statements by Smotrich on Gaza Occupation and Settlement Expansion"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>According to reports from Mehr News Agency, citing Al Jazeera, Israeli attacks on Gaza continue unabated, even after more than four months since the ceasefire began. The occupiers show no intention of retreating from Gaza, contrary to the terms of the ceasefire agreement. On Monday, Bezalel Smotrich, the fascist finance minister of the Israeli regime, made audacious statements, asserting, &#8216;We will ultimately occupy Gaza and create Jewish settlements there.&#8217;In a conversation with Israeli radio, this extremist minister implicitly acknowledged Tel Aviv&#8217;s failure to eradicate Hamas, stating, &#8216;We have not abandoned our goal of destroying Hamas and are giving Donald Trump, the President of the United States, the opportunity to do this in his own way. If he fails to eliminate Hamas, the Israeli army will receive international legitimacy and support from the U.S. to carry out this task.&#8217;Continuing his provocative rhetoric, Smotrich announced that Hamas would soon receive an ultimatum to surrender all weapons, headquarters, and tunnels. He added, &#8216;If they comply, there will be no issue; however, if they do not, we will have the legitimacy for independent action.&#8217;On another front the Israeli army claimed that its seventh brigade has completed a three-month mission in Rafah southern Gaza destroying 8.5 kilometers of tunnels in the southern region. The occupying army reported that during tunnel-clearing operations in Rafah direct clashes occurred between its soldiers and Hamas forces.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The extremist finance minister of the Israeli regime boldly declared intentions to occupy Gaza and establish Jewish settlements in the area.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":578,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[64],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-22841","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-palestine"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ghodsnama.com\/api\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22841","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ghodsnama.com\/api\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ghodsnama.com\/api\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ghodsnama.com\/api\/wp\/v2\/users\/578"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ghodsnama.com\/api\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=22841"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/ghodsnama.com\/api\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22841\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ghodsnama.com\/api\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=22841"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ghodsnama.com\/api\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=22841"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ghodsnama.com\/api\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=22841"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}