What Haaretz is saying:
Israel's 'Real Estate Bonanza' Involves Wiping Gaza Off the Face of the Earth
Beneath Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's usual empty slogans ("total victory"), the true goal of the most horrific war in our history is becoming clear – real estate.
Hundreds of soldiers and tens of thousands of civilians have been killed in the Gaza Strip in order to build housing for police officers, according to the abridged plan proposed by National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, or to turn all of Gaza into a "real estate bonanza," according to the far-reaching plan proposed by Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich.
On Wednesday, Smotrich unveiled his insane plan and said that negotiations over it with the Trump administration are already underway. This happened at an Urban Renewal Summit sponsored by Merkaz Hanadlan, an umbrella organization for people in the real estate sector – the most suitable possible place to present a plan this idiotic.
And Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has yet to voice any reservations about his finance minister's remarks.
The very fact that this plan is being discussed with the United States, and that a senior cabinet minister has presented it as a "business plan," shows the chasm between the government's official statements about destroying Hamas and getting the hostages back and the economic/colonialist ambitions its members are discussing behind the scenes.
The Gaza Strip is Palestinian The Gaza Strip is Palestinian. It is the place of residence of more than two million human beings who were born there, most of them descendants of Palestinians who were expelled or fled from their villages and lands inside Israel during the War of Independence in 1948.
Any talk of occupying such a densely populated, impoverished strip of land, making it unfit for human habitation and systematically cleansing it of its residents so that Israelis and Americans can reap profits, is criminal talk that has no place in any country in the world.
The fact that here, senior cabinet ministers can say such things freely and openly, and they are not immediately and unambiguously repudiated by the prime minister, shows the moral, political and legal depths to which Israel has sunk under our current nightmare government.
For months, Netanyahu has been trying to erect a smokescreen of empty promises about freeing the hostages and ousting Hamas. At the same time, he has asked the army to raze Gaza to its foundations, with the result that entire cities have been wiped off the face of the earth and entire villages have disappeared.
But on Wednesday, Smotrich revealed the interests hiding behind these actions. Operation Gideon's Chariots – in both its first and second stages, and perhaps someday in a third stage – is a military codename for preparing the ground for Smotrich's "real estate bonanza."
All this merely further clarifies the need to end the war. Even people who were still hesitant or believed the government's lies must now stand up in unison to stop this atrocity with their bodies. No bonanza for anyone will emerge from this war, only horrifying crimes and disasters.