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In a speech before the Knesset on October 13, 2021, Bezalel Smotrich – now Israel’s finance minister and a senior partner in Benjamin Netanyahu’s government, then a member of Parliament – referred to Arab lawmakers as “enemies” and “supporters of terrorism,” adding: “You are here by mistake, because Ben-Gurion did not finish the job and did not throw you out in ’48.” In effect, he argued that Israel’s first prime minister, David Ben-Gurion, erred in not expelling all Arabs during the 1948 war and the Nakba.

On April 29, 2024, speaking at a public event about cities and towns in the Gaza Strip, Smotrich said: “There is no half-measure. Rafah, Deir al-Balah, Nuseirat – total destruction. ‘Blot out the memory of Amalek from under heaven’ – there is no place under heaven.” On January 6, 2025, he wrote on X that cities in the West Bank should be flattened as the Israeli military had done in Gaza: “Funduk, Nablus and Jenin should look like Jabalia.”

On March 23, 2026, Smotrich said: “Today we are evacuating the residents of southern Lebanon. We are rebuilding and developing our northern communities, and destroying the terror villages in Lebanon.” He added that Israel should annex southern Lebanon up to the Litani River, which, he said, “must be our new border with the State of Lebanon.” He is not alone in expressing such views. A day later, Defence Minister Israel Katz wrote on X: “Israel’s policy in Lebanon is clear: where there is terror and rockets, there are no homes and no residents, and the IDF will control the security zone up to the Litani.”

These statements correspond to developments on the ground. Since October 2023, Israel has carried out campaigns of ethnic cleansing in Gaza, the West Bank and Lebanon, using overwhelming force, in violation of international law, to compel millions of civilians to leave their homes while deliberately destroying many of them to prevent their return.

If the Smotrich-Ben-Gvir-Netanyahu bloc prevails in the autumn 2026 elections, the government it forms may seek, in line with Smotrich’s description of Ben-Gurion’s “mistake,” to “finish the job” of ethnic cleansing left undone in 1948 in Israel itself, targeting the Arab minority, which makes up roughly one-fifth of the population.

Within Israel’s sovereign borders, such a campaign would not take the form of aerial bombardment. Instead, it could unfold gradually through policies and practices aimed at similar outcomes. The infrastructure is already in place: a mix of direct and indirect measures that could enable the removal of Arab communities from........

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