Smotrich to evict entire West Bank village in response to ICC arrest warrant

Bezalel Smotrich has announced the imminent ethnic cleansing of an entire Palestinian Bedouin village in the West Bank. This is in response to the International Criminal Court (ICC) issuing a warrant for his arrest.

Smotrich, the Israeli far-right finance minister, said he was informed that the ICC in ⁠The Hague ⁠had ⁠requested a warrant for his arrest.

West Bank retaliation

In 2024, the ICC issued arrest warrants for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former defense minister Yoav Gallant.

The ICC found that there were:

reasonable grounds to believe that each has committed the war crime of using starvation as a method of warfare and crimes against humanity of murder, persecution, and other inhumane acts, as a direct perpetrator, acting jointly with others.

The Chamber also found reasonable grounds to believe that they are each responsible for the war crime of intentionally directing attacks against civilians as a superior.

Smotrich is the leader of the far-right Religious Zionist party and an illegal settler who lives in the Occupied West Bank.

His Ministry of Finance owns an arms factory in the UK, which has recently been awarded contracts with the UK government.

Smotrich has repeatedly called for Israel to completely ethnically cleanse all 1.8m people from Gaza, so it can ‘be settled’.

Previously, Israeli courts tried Smotrich on charges of ‘Jewish terrorism’. According to The Times Of Israel:

He was arrested by the Shin Bet’s division for suspected Jewish terrorism during the disengagement from Gaza.

Shortly before the August 2005 operation to remove Jewish settlers from 21 settlements in the Gaza Strip and four more in the West Bank, Smotrich and four other activists were detained and found to be in possession of 700 liters of gasoline and oil.

He is a self-described fascist homophobe, has mocked non-Orthodox jews, discriminated against Arabs, and opposed legislation to combat violence against women. Essentially, he is an egotistical piece of shit.

According to Al Jazeera:

The ICC accusations reportedly centre on Smotrich’s forced displacement orders for Palestinians, his support for moving Israeli settlers into occupied territory, and his claim it may be “justified and moral” to starve Palestinians in Gaza.

Forced displacement

In response to the arrest warrant, Smotrich is once again going on the attack.

He announced that:

the first target that will be attacked: immediately after my remarks, we will sign an order for the evacuation of Khan al-Ahmar.

This will forcibly displace the entire Palestinian community from this occupied West Bank village, which has already endured a years-long legal battle with Israeli authorities for its survival.

Back in 2018, Israel’s supreme court permitted the illegal terrorist state to forcibly transfer the entire Bedouin community from Khan al-Ahmar. At the time, this consisted of 173 people in 32 families. However, the government then delayed the decision.

The community belongs to the Jahalin tribe, which came from the area of Tel Arad in the Negev desert. The IOF originally expelled it in the 1950s. Now, it is the largest refugee tribe in the West Bank.

The members first leased land to live on and to graze their flocks. However, Israel then built the illegal settlement of Ma’ale Adumim. The IOF once again forcibly displaced them, and they settled in their current location.

For years, Israel has been attempting to forcibly transfer the community a third time.

The community already suffers constant harassment at the hands of the Israeli authorities, making life there unbearable, with a view to making residents leave.

Israel has also refused to connect the community to the electric grid and roads and has repeatedly demolished structures.

Now, Israel is planning to demolish every single structure in the community and expel the residents. The settler-colonial state will now demolish the local school. It also serves the children of 11 other Palestinian communities.

War crimes

According to the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court (ICC), forced displacement is a war crime in international and non-international armed conflicts.

Additionally, when it is committed as part of a “widespread or systematic attack” directed against any civilian population, deportation or forcible transfer of populations in occupied territories are “grave breaches” of the Geneva Conventions.

They can also be qualified as crimes against humanity under Article 71 of the Rome Statute.

Of course, international law does not seem to apply to Zionists. Moreover, ethnically cleansing a whole village is just another day in the life of Smotrich and the Zionist regime.

It has been 18 months since the ICC issued warrants for the arrests of Netanyahu and Yoav Gallant. Since then, multiple countries have allowed them to enter without enforcing the warrants, which does not leave much hope for Smotrich’s arrest. However, it does reaffirm what anyone paying attention already knew – Smotrich and Israel are war criminals.

Featured image via Amir Levy / Stringer/Getty Images