Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich visited Sderot Monday together with members of the Religious Zionism faction, addressing the students and rabbis of Sderot's hesder yeshiva.
During the visit, conducted ahead of Memorial Day and Independence Day, Smotrich said, "We will say Hallel (a prayer of thanksgiving) to the Holy One with immense gratitude for the many levels added this year to our independence. Immediately after the great thanks, we will continue to ask the Master of the Universe for additional levels of independence."
"This depends only on us," he stressed. "Gaza needs to be a Jewish city with Israeli settlement. The enemy must leave it and seek its future in other countries around the world - and this is also what needs to happen in Judea and Samaria."
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has stated multiple times that he does not intend for Israel to resettle Gaza with Jewish Israelis.
Rabbi David Fendel, who heads the hesder yeshiva, said: "We are full of gratitude to Religious Zionism. You carry out our mission in many areas: in the agricultural farms, in the changes in Judea and Samaria - for that alone we should recite the entire Hallel prayer - [and] in the economy and the tremendous influence on policy as never before, and in Torah institutions and in institutions of revival for Israeli society. We stand behind you and you represent us faithfully."
