Who are the Israeli ministers sanctioned over Gaza comments?

Itamar Ben-Gvir, the security minister, and Bezalel Smotrich, the finance minister, have called for Jews to settle on Palestinian land and the destruction of Gaza

Itamar Ben-Gvir, left, and Bezalel Smotrich. Picture: Gil Cohen-Magen/AFP/Getty Images

Australia and Britain will sanction two far-right Israeli ministers over their comments on Gaza, which have been described by David Lammy, the foreign secretary, as “monstrous”. Who are Itamar Ben-Gvir and Bezalel Smotrich?

Itamar Ben-Gvir, security minister

Police escort Itamar Ben-Gvir as he walks through the Old City of Jerusalem on May 26. Picture: Menahem Kahana / AFP

Itamar Ben-Gvir, the face of Israel’s far right and of the movement to settle on Palestinian land, is no stranger to international criticism.

Once filmed brandishing a gun at Palestinians in East Jerusalem, Ben-Gvir — a member of the Israeli parliament — has no qualms in stating his ultranationalist beliefs, including that the third Jewish Temple should be built over the al-Aqsa Mosque on the contested Temple Mount complex, and that Jews must resettle the Gaza Strip.

Ben-Gvir, 49, lives in the West Bank settlement of Kiryat Arba in Hebron, opposite a grave dedicated to a murderer of Muslim worshippers in 1994. He serves as the leader of Jewish Power, a party in Binyamin Netanyahu’s government — the most right-wing in Israel’s history — as the country’s security minister, and temporarily quit his role over the latest ceasefire in Gaza before fighting resumed in March.

A leading proponent of the US-backed plan to encourage the emigration of Gazans, Ben-Gvir has said that he would be “very happy” to live there. The movement to repopulate Gaza is reported to have 700 Jewish families who are willing and ready to settle.

He has also called to stop all aid, electricity and water from entering Gaza.

Ben-Gvir never served in the Israeli army and was once on the fringes of the political system for his extremism. He has been convicted several times of racist incitement and support for a terrorist group, as an ideological follower of Meir Kahane, a Brooklyn-born rabbi whose party was banned from Israel in the 1970s.

Nonetheless, Ben-Gvir’s electoral success in 2022 left Netanyahu dependent on his party in parliament. It secured Ben-Gvir a senior portfolio and he has enacted sweeping police and gun reforms.

Under his authority, thousands of Israeli settlers in the West Bank have been armed since the October 7 massacre by Hamas. He has also overseen a police crackdown on anti-government and anti-war protesters. The police force have come under criticism for using violent riot dispersal methods against the families of hostages held by Hamas in Gaza.

Bezalel Smotrich, finance minister

Bezalel Smotrich. Picture: AFP

Bezalel Smotrich wants to see Gaza destroyed and for Palestinian villages in the West Bank to look the same.

Smotrich, 45, is uncompromising in his beliefs to “conquer and cleanse” the Gaza Strip in comments that have raised the prospect of international sanctions over the past year and a half. A second-generation settler, he is a leader of the national religious extreme right.

Israel’s goal is “destroying everything that’s left of the Gaza Strip”, he said, “conquering, cleansing and remaining in Gaza until Hamas is destroyed”. He has called for Gazans to be corralled into decreasingly smaller zones until they continue on, “with God’s help, to third countries”.

Since the start of the war, Smotrich has been included in high-level security cabinet meetings, most recently in discussions on Israel’s strategy on the Iranian nuclear threat.

He came to prominence in 2005, when Ariel Sharon, then the prime minister, enacted Israel’s unilateral withdrawal from Gaza and the forced removal of settlers there. Smotrich’s staunch opposition to the move led to his arrest on suspicion of planning disruptive protests.

In 2022, his Religious Zionism Party joined the government and he was given the portfolio of finance minister and wider powers in the defence ministry, including control over planning in the West Bank. Under his leadership, Israel has seen the biggest settlement expansion in the West Bank in decades.

The Times