Netanyahu welcomes Smotrich’s retraction
"It is regrettable that some in the international community have been quick to condemn Israel but haven't yet demanded this necessary condemnation from the PA," the PM concluded.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has welcomed Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich’s retraction of the “inappropriate” remark that Israel should “wipe out” the Palestinian town of Huwara.
Smotrich’s comment, made last Wednesday and walked back on Saturday as a “slip of the tongue” made in a “storm of emotions”, has caused an international uproar and put the top minister’s upcoming trip to the United States in question.
The developments came after extremist settlers rampaged through Huwara last week and set homes and cars on fire, resulting in one Palestinian killed and several badly hurt, in response to the terror murder of Israeli brothers Hallel and Yagel Yaniv in a Palestinian shooting attack in the Nablus-area town hours earlier.
“It is important that Finance Minister Smotrich clarified that he had no intention [of referring to] harming innocent people or collective punishment,” Netanyahu tweeted in Hebrew. “I know his opinions and they were reflected in his clarification.
“None of us is free of mistakes, including foreign diplomats,” Netanyahu added, in a thinly veiled swipe at US ambassador to Israel Tom Nides. This followed a report by Channel 12 news – firmly denied to The Times of Israel by his spokesperson – that Nides had said to an Israeli official regarding Smotrich, “If I could, I’d throw him off the plane to Washington.”
Netanyahu added that “Israel’s policy is clear: to fight terrorists and terror supporters while avoiding harming innocents and collective punishment.”
He noted that the Palestinian Authority hadn’t yet condemned the deadly terror attack that preceded the Huwara riot.
“It is regrettable that some in the international community have been quick to condemn Israel but haven’t yet demanded this necessary condemnation from the PA,” the PM concluded.
Smotrich, head of the far-right Religious Zionism party, had said he thinks “the village of Huwara needs to be wiped out – I think the State of Israel should do it,” and that “God forbid”, the job shouldn’t be done by private citizens. “We shouldn’t be dragged into anarchy in which civilians take the law into their own hands.”
His comments drew fierce condemnation within Israel and around the world, with the US calling the remarks “repugnant” and “disgusting” and the UN saying they were “provocative, inflammatory and just unacceptable”. Similar condemnations rolled in from Jordan, the UAE, Saudi Arabia and others.
On Saturday evening, Smotrich told Channel 12 that his “word choice was wrong, but the intention was very clear” – that Israeli security forces must be on the offensive in the war against terror. It “goes without saying” that he did not intend to call for violence of any kind, Smotrich claimed.
He also said the rampage was “a very serious nationalist crime, but not terror”, also calling Huwara a “village that is beset by terror”.
Meanwhile, officials have said the White House has been holding discussions on whether or not to grant Smotrich a visa – but have indicated they are unlikely to block his visit.
Calls from many in the Jewish community have grown to uninvite Smotrich following his inflammatory remarks.
The White House said last Thursday that US government officials would not be meeting with Smotrich during his visit.
TIMES OF ISRAEL
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