AhlulBayt News Agency: Hardline Israeli finance minister Bezalel Smotrich has called for dismantling the Palestinian Authority (PA) and seizing all the territory of the occupied West Bank, as the International Criminal Court (ICC) has already requested a warrant for his arrest over his forced displacement orders targeting Palestinians.
In provocative remarks on Wednesday, Smotrich stressed that “the Palestinian Authority should be dismantled”, referring to the Palestinian self-governing body - established under "the Oslo Accords" - as an obstacle to the regime’s security and long-term goals.
The so-called Oslo Accords, a pair of foundational agreements signed between Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) in 1993 (Oslo I) and 1995 (Oslo II), created the PA – now led by President Mahmoud Abbas - granting it limited self-governing powers in parts of the occupied West Bank while Israel retained overall control over key aspects of security, borders, and movement.
“The Oslo Accords are a terrible disaster. These lines of A, B and C should be erased. And today, we have to seize all the territory. Because in the end, what can we do? Reality shows that we have settlements in the territory. There is an army. There is deterrence. There is intelligence ... and there is terror in it,” Smotrich further said.
The Oslo Accords divided the occupied West Bank into Areas A, B, and C as a supposedly temporary arrangement. While Palestinians were granted limited self-rule in Areas A and B, Israel retained full control over Area C, which makes up about 60 percent of the territory.
The division, however, is widely viewed as having enabled the expansion of Israeli settlements and the fragmentation of Palestinian territory, turning a supposedly temporary framework into a tool for entrenching Israel’s occupation.
On May 19, Smotrich told a press conference that he had been informed that the ICC prosecutor had sought an arrest warrant against him.
The ICC’s request for an arrest warrant centers on the extremist minister’s forced displacement orders targeting Palestinians, his support for moving Israeli settlers into occupied territory, and his claim that it may be “justified and moral” to starve Palestinians in the besieged Gaza Strip.
If approved, it would make Smotrich the third Israeli official targeted by the court, after Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former minister of military affairs Yoav Gallant for “crimes against humanity and war crimes” committed during Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza.
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