US accuses Israeli far-right minister of ‘misleading’ Gaza ceasefire comments

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The White House has issued an unusually forthright report of Bezalel Smotrich, Israel’s far-right finance minister, who has been an outspoken critic of a Gaza ceasefire deal that Washington is urgently trying to finalize.

US National Security Council spokesperson John Kirby on Friday denounced remarks by Smotrich, who earlier in the day said “it is definitely not the time for a capitulating deal that ends the war before the elimination of the Hamas Isis Nazis.”

Kirby said the finance minister was “dead wrong” and that he was “misleading the Israeli public.”

“The views expressed by Mr Smotrich specifically would in fact sacrifice the lives of Israeli hostages, his own countrymen and American hostages as well and flies in the face of the national security interests of Israel at this critical stage of the war,” he said.

While Israeli and American officials have often had disagreements, they are usually not made public and it is rare for an American official to single out an Israeli minister for criticism.

The comments are a sign of the Biden administration’s frustration with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his rightwing government, which has so far refused to accept the proposed deal, in which a ceasefire would be followed by the release in stages of Israeli hostages and Palestinian prisoners held in Israeli jails.

Smotrich’s latest comments followed a joint statement from the leaders of the US, Egypt and Qatar late on Thursday setting a date for the next round of hostage negotiations and calling on Israel and Hamas to sit down and agree to a deal.

The outburst from Washington comes as the US is preparing to defend Israel from a potential Iranian retaliatory attack after Hizbollah’s military chief Fuad Shukr was killed by an Israeli strike in Beirut, and Hamas’s political leader Ismail Haniyeh was assassinated in Tehran.

Smotrich was “saying this as President (Joe) Biden is actually directing the United States military to the Middle East to directly defend Israel against a potential attack from Iran or other Iranian backed terrorist groups,” Kirby said.

“The idea that he (Biden) would support a deal that leaves Israel’s security at risk, it’s just factually wrong.”

Smotrich has been a lightning rod for tensions over Israel’s conduct in the West Bank. He holds a second portfolio in the defense ministry, giving him significant powers over settlements and their expansion, and some in the Biden administration support imposing sanctions on him.

Earlier this week he caused outrage by saying that allowing 2mn civilians in Gaza to die of hunger would be “justified and moral”.

Despite the tensions, the US on Friday stepped back from an earlier threat to impose sanctions on a controversial Israeli military unit, Netzah Yehuda, for alleged human rights abuses against Palestinians in the occupied West Bank.

“After thoroughly reviewing that information, we have determined that violations by this unit have also been effectively remediated,” said Matthew Miller, a spokesperson for the Department of State. “This unit can continue receiving security assistance from the United States of America.”

Netzah Yehuda has for years faced allegations of abuse against Palestinians in the West Bank, where he was primarily deployed before the Israeli military moved him out of the territory in early 2023 after growing US criticism of his conduct.

In the most infamous incident a year earlier, a 78-year-old Palestinian-American, Omar As’ad, died in the middle of the night after being detained and bound at a Netzah Yehuda checkpoint on the West Bank. A subsequent Israel Defense Forces investigation dismissed two junior officers from the unit, although legal action was never taken.