Far-right Israeli minister Bezalel Smotrich on Monday said that it might be "justified and moral" to cause two million Palestinian civilians to starve to death until Hamas returns Israeli hostages, drawing criticism from humanitarian groups.
Human rights campaigners have demonstrated that Israel is limiting and delaying aid into the Gaza Strip, and even using starvation as a "weapon of war." United Nations' experts warned earlier this month that famine had spread across the enclave, calling it an "intentional and targeted starvation campaign against the Palestinian people" and "a form of genocidal violence."
The comments from Smotrich, Israel's finance minister, added further weight to critics' charges that the country's leaders are uncommitted to addressing the humanitarian crisis in Gaza.
"We bring in aid because there is no choice," Smotrich, the finance minister, said at a conference hosted by the right-wing news outlet Israel Hayom. "We can't, in the current global reality, manage a war. Nobody will let us cause two million civilians to die of hunger, even though it might be justified and moral, until our hostages are returned."
"We live today in a certain reality, we need international legitimacy for this war," he added.
Ahmed Fouad Alkhatib, a Palestinian-American fellow at the Atlantic Council, argued that Smotrich's comments indicated a genocidal intent to kill all of the people of Gaza. "This is what fascism and the desire for mass extermination and displacement look like," he wrote on social media. "These criminals want to eliminate all Palestinians in Gaza, not just Hamas."
Jehad Abusalim, executive director of the Institute for Palestine Studies, said Smotrich's comments were "horrifying but not surprising."
"This vile rhetoric is just the tip of the iceberg," he wrote on social media. "Smotrich is a minister in a government that Western leaders claim shares their values."
Peace Now, an anti-occupation Israeli group, condemned Smotrich's remarks in several social media posts, expressing disbelief that a "senior member of our government" would say such a thing and arguing that it would be "justified" for the U.S. to sanction Smotrich.
"All the way to the Hague," Peace Now wrote, suggesting that Smotrich or other Israeli leaders were guilty of war crimes.
Smotrich implied that allowing in any aid to Gaza was a public relations exercise aimed at quelling international criticism of the Israel's assault on the enclave, which has killed nearly 40,000 Palestinians since October, according to the Gaza health ministry.
Hamas and affiliated militant groups killed more than 1,100 Israelis in a horrific massacre on October 7, taking about 250 hostages, only about half of whom have since been returned. Israeli authorities have said they believe more than 70 hostages are still being held alive, while more than 40 have died.
The International Court of Justice (ICJ), the United Nations' top court, has issued a series of rulings against Israel this year, determining that the country must prevent acts of genocide in Gaza and provide sufficient aid, stop its assault on Rafah, and end its unlawful occupation of Gaza and the West Bank immediately. In May, the International Criminal Court, which was founded in 2001 to establish accountability for the world's most serious crimes, sought arrest warrants for Israeli and Hamas leaders.
Humanitarian groups including Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch have said repeatedly that Israel has not complied with the first ICJ ruling—Israeli forces continue to obstruct aid transport and distribution in Gaza, despite mass starvation there.