
Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich on Wednesday morning expressed opposition to the proposed prisoner swap-ceasefire agreement between Israel and the Hamas terror group.
"Hamas is at its lowest point since the start of the war," Smotrich told Kol Barama Radio. "This is not the time to throw it a lifeline, this is the time to continue to crush it and pressure it so that they will give back the hostages - but with a deal that shows its surrender and not ours."
He added, "Deals in which we release hundreds of terrorist murderers who will go back to murdering Jews, deals in which we exit northern Gaza and allow a million Gazans to return there and destroy our achievements, which we gained with so much blood - that is a serious mistake."
"If we were not talking with Hamas, and simply watching them through the sights and tank fire, planes, and our heroic fighters - the hostages would have been here a long time ago."
Smotrich stressed that he knows that this is "a deal which is not good, which does not serve the State of Israel's goals and interests, or victory in the war, and which also does not bring back the hostages - because at the end of the day, it is a partial deal."
Regarding his position on drafting haredim into the IDF, Smotrich said, "There are those who are trying to turn this into a tool to attack and bring down the government, and we need to be careful about that. But there is a very great and authentic pain in the religious community. I know what it means for a mother not to sleep at night, and I lost my cousin in this war. There is pain that they are using the Torah in order to get out of enlisting in the IDF, but I as a public leader cannot allow myself to speak from my gut and emotion - only from my head. We are pained that the haredi communuty is not part of this with us, and we want to create a change, but it needs to be as part of a process."
Regarding Attorney General Gali Baharav-Miara, he said, "To say that I don't want to replace the Attorney General is embarrassing. I think that during war there are things that are more and less important. If the Attorney General does not allow us to run things, then we have no choice but to begin the process."