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As protests and unrest rage across Israel this week, many Israelis made impassioned calls for restraint and dialogue to resolve one of the most serious domestic crises in the country’s history.
But one government leader seemed determined to raise the stakes even higher: Bezalel Smotrich, the settler activist who serves as finance minister in Benjamin Netanyahu’s right-wing government. Mr Smotrich is a key supporter of the government’s plan to exert more control over the Supreme Court, an issue that has fueled weeks of mass protests.
“We must not stop reform by any means,” Mr Smotrich said in a video message to his supporters on Monday before Mr Netanyahu announced a delay to the plan. Mr Smotrich instructed his followers to counter the anti-government protests with demonstrations of their own, a call that prompted widespread fears of violent confrontations on Israel’s streets. “We will not let them steal our voice and our country,” he said.
Then Mr. Smotrich resumed his daily work, preparing a new national budget. That afternoon, he gave a detailed speech to lawmakers about fiscal responsibility and market uncertainty. “The greatest service we can do for the citizens of Israel,” he said in parliament, “is to combat inflation.”
Mr. Smotrich, 43, is a study in contrasts. He is one of the most extreme voices in the most right-wing government in Israel’s history – but also a well-rounded strategist for expansion, according to politicians on both sides of the political divide who have worked with him.
He declined to be interviewed, but, in an attempt to dissociate himself, he showed a reporter part of his routine at the Ministry of Finance. He spent time discussing competition law in the credit industry, surrounded by senior civil servants.
It was a scene that contrasted sharply with his public image as the man at the center of Israel’s three current crises: political turmoil over judicial overhaul at home, rising violence in the occupied West Bank, and a growing rift with foreign governments. – specifically the United States – and the Jewish diaspora in the United States and Britain.
“He is a contradiction,” said Mossi Raj, a left-wing former lawmaker who struck an unlikely rapport with Mr. Smotrich in parliament.
“He is a man who wants to talk, who wants to be understood,” Mr. Raj said. “He’s curious about other people, what they think, why they think differently.” Despite all this, Mr. Raj said, “He is really extreme in his views, and I absolutely cannot accept that.”
When Mr Netanyahu took power in December at the head of a coalition filled with divisive ministers, Mr Smotrich stood out for his incendiary statements, emerging as a lightning rod for criticism in Israel and abroad.
For Israelis, the storm around him is astonishing. Mr. Smotrich has attracted controversy over the years for his extreme views. she has Supported segregation between Arabs and Jews in the maternity wards, lined Jewish property developers who would not sell to Arabs, and called for Israel to be governed by Jewish law. In his 20s, he helped parade goats and donkeys through Jerusalem for an anti-gay protest.
He wants to establish permanent Israeli control over the West Bank, where he lives and which Israel annexed in 1967 but never formally annexed. He opposes a Palestinian state rather than consolidating the presence of some 500,000 Israelis in the West Bank.
Now, in office, Mr. Smotrich has been one of the most vocal advocates of the government’s efforts to curb the power of the Supreme Court, which he has long opposed because it is at the heart of the settlers’ movement to take more Prohibits ambitious endeavours. Land in the West Bank. He has also stoked tensions in the West Bank, where deadly violence is at one of its highest levels this century – most prominently when he said in February that Huwara, a Palestinian town at the center of the unrest, had been “wiped out” by Israel. should go. ,
This month, at an event in Paris, he stood in front of a map showing Jordan – a neighboring country that shares a fragile peace with Israel – as an Israeli province, and declared, “There is no one like the Palestinian people.” Not a thing.”
On a visit to Washington this month, US officials refused to meet with him and liberal Jewish groups and Israeli expatriates protested against him.
One of Mr Smotrich’s closest aides said his inflammatory statements about Palestinians represented his core ideals.
“This is what he believes in,” said Daniela Weiss, the former mayor of Kedumim, the West Bank settlement where Mr. Smotrich lives. “The Land of Israel belongs to Israel – and not to any other institution, body or organization. It is a Jewish state.
Speaking the truth as he saw it, he said, was “more important than any diplomatic manipulation.”
Mr Smotrich, the son of a right-wing rabbi, believes that every part of Israel and the occupied territories was promised to the Jews by God.
He has described himself as a “proud homophobe” and, like many ultra-Orthodox in Israel, does not shake hands with women for religious reasons. He has opposed holding football games on the Jewish Sabbath and last year suggested running the economy according to the laws of the Jewish Bible.
“They tried many economic theories, they tried capitalism, they tried socialism, but they didn’t try a thing,” Mr. Smotrich told mishpacha, a religious magazine. “If we apply the Torah, we will have economic abundance,” he said. Some supporters later downplayed the remarks, saying that they were not meant literally.
As a youth activist in 2005, Mr Smotrich was detained for weeks – though never charged – after being arrested during an unsuccessful protest to stop the destruction of Israeli settlements in Gaza.
In 2017, he published the plan Determining how Israel can establish permanent control over the West Bank, which Israel captured in the 1967 Arab–Israeli War but never formally annexed. He proposed that at least initially, Palestinians would be denied the right to vote, and that those who did not accept Israeli control would be paid to emigrate, or if they resorted to violence they will be killed.
Mr Smotrich was elected to parliament in 2015, later becoming leader of Religious Zionism, a far-right party. As a legislator, his long-standing animosity against the Supreme Court escalated when the justices struck down a law he sponsored that would have allowed settlers to build on private Palestinian land.
He briefly served as Minister of Transport in the earlier Netanyahu administration, with supporters and detractors alike acknowledging his carefulness and ability to promote major road projects in both Israel and the West Bank.
Last year, it was Mr Smotrich’s party, not Mr Netanyahu’s, that first set out detailed plans that evolved into a government proposal to limit the courts’ power.
In addition to his role as finance minister, Mr Smotrich persuaded Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in February to grant him influence over part of the defense ministry, giving him control over some civilian affairs in West Bank settlements.
“He’s talented, he’s very smart, he’s very sharp,” said Yisrael Medad, a veteran settler activist who worked with Mr. Smotrich.
But sometimes, Mr. Medad said, he hurt himself with thoughtless comments. “There is a lack of coordination between their brain and their mouth,” he said.
And his comments on Huwara, a Palestinian town in the northern West Bank where a Palestinian gunman shot dead two Israeli settlers on February 26, prompting violent retaliation by Israeli settlers, could be a turning point. Is.
Mr. Smotrich responded to the arson attacks by settlers on Huwara by saying that it was the responsibility of the state, not civilian settlers, to destroy the town.
“Huwara needs to be eradicated,” Mr. Smotrich said at a business conference. “The State of Israel needs to do this – heaven forbid private individuals.”
For some opponents of the judicial overhaul, these comments were a defining moment.
Dozens of reserve pilots later met with the Air Force commander to express their reluctance to volunteer for alternate service if the overhaul was fully enacted. He cited Mr Smotrich’s comments on Huwara as an example he feared could become state policy – and military practice – if the Supreme Court’s authority was undermined.
Mr Smotrich later expressed “deep regret” for his comments and said he had only envisaged the demolition of some houses in Huwara.
But for some, the damage was already done. The number of reservists reporting for duty declined in March, as concern over the overhaul spread beyond the Air Force. Some reservists said at least part of that concern was directly linked to Mr. Smotrich’s comments. Reservists’ reluctance was a key factor in Monday’s suspension of the overhaul.
For Tzipi Livni, former justice minister and leader of the protests, “an understanding has begun that the two crises are linked.”
He added that some protesters “are beginning to understand that this is not just about the Supreme Court.” “We are in the midst of a battle not only for the future of Israel, but for the nature of Israel.”
And during protests in Tel Aviv, demonstrators highlighted the government’s failure to stop settler violence in the West Bank.
“Where were you in Huwara?” The crowd shouted slogans at the police officers.
Gabby Sobelman Contributed reporting from Rehovot, Israel and Myra Noveck from Jerusalem.
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