Bezalel Smotrich

Bezalel Smotrich (born February 27, 1980, Haspin, Golan Heights) is a far-right Israeli politician and the head of the Religious Zionism party. In a coalition deal with Benjamin Netanyahu in 2022, he became finance minister, gained oversight of Israeli settlements in the West Bank, and pushed a controversial attempt at judicial reform that led to unprecedented unrest in Israel in 2023. As a lifelong Israeli settler who is dedicated to the idea that the West Bank and the Gaza Strip are part of biblical Israel and therefore rightfully belong to the Jewish people, he cofounded an influential organization in 2006 called Regavim (Hebrew: “Plots of Land”) that monitors and takes legal action against Palestinian land use, for “the protection of Israel’s national lands and resources.” During the Israel-Hamas War, Smotrich has used his position to restrict the flow of essential funds, goods, and services to the Gaza Strip and the West Bank and has facilitated settlement expansion in the West Bank.

Early life as a religiously dedicated Israeli settler

Smotrich was born in Haspin (Hispin), an Israeli settlement in the Golan Heights, a hilly area west of the Jordan Valley that is considered internationally to be part of Syria but has been occupied by Israeli forces since the Six-Day War (1967). He grew up in Beit El, a settlement in the West Bank that was named for the ancient city of Bethel. His father was a rabbi, and Smotrich grew up attending Yeshivat Mercaz Harav, a school that is widely considered to be the flagship yeshiva of the religious Zionism movement, which seeks to merge Israeli state policy with the beliefs and practices of some Orthodox Jews.

In 2005 Smotrich joined protests against the planned evacuation of Israeli settlements in the Gaza Strip (see Israel’s disengagement from Gaza in 2005). He and four other far-right activists were arrested for attempting to blockade highways, and they were held for three weeks after they were found to be in possession of 185 gallons (700 liters) of oil and gasoline. Smotrich was ultimately not charged with a crime.

In 2006 Smotrich organized an anti-LGBTQ gathering in Jerusalem to protest the city’s annual Gay Pride parade. Demonstrators marched through the streets with goats and donkeys, decrying what they called “deviant acts” of gay couples. Smotrich has since said he regrets his involvement, but in 2015 he identified himself as a “proud homophobe.” Also in 2006 he helped establish Regavim, which the left-leaning Israeli newspaper Haaretz has described as “an organization waging total war on Palestinian construction in the West Bank.”

Rise amid the fringe far right

Smotrich entered the Knesset in 2015 as a member of the Jewish Home party, a religious Zionist party that was led at the time by fellow activist and settler Naftali Bennett. In a 2016 interview with Haaretz, Smotrich called for “decisive action” to annex the West Bank, denounced any notion of a Palestinian state, and said that if a Palestinian child threw stones in protest of Israeli sovereignty, “either I will shoot him or I will jail him or I will expel him.”

The Jewish Home party splintered in advance of the 2019 election when Bennett formed a new right-wing party comprising both religious and secular right-wing Jews. Smotrich led the faction that remained committed to religious Zionism, which then formed an electoral alliance with Bennett’s party and others called Yamina (“Toward the Right”). Amid a tumultuous political environment in which two successive elections failed to produce a government, Smotrich briefly served in a caretaker government as transportation minister. His position came to an end when an emergency unity government was formed in May 2020 to address the COVID-19 pandemic. That unity government collapsed at the end of the year when its members failed to pass an annual budget.

When elections were held in March 2021, Smotrich led an electoral alliance of three small right-wing parties under the banner of Religious Zionism. The Religious Zionism faction opted to sit in the opposition when Bennett formed a new government that consisted of a broad spectrum of left- and right-wing parties as well as a party representing the interests of Palestinian citizens of Israel. Bennett’s fragile government carried out centrist policies that avoided alienating his allies on the left, but many religious Zionists claimed that those policies undermined Israel’s Jewish identity. Bennett was soon abandoned by many of his right-wing supporters and in June 2022 found his government without the backing to carry out essential policies. He dissolved the Knesset and decided not to contest early elections. Looking for an alternative among the right-wing parties, Bennett’s voter base turned to Smotrich’s Religious Zionism party.

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Entering the cabinet: judiciary reform proposal and policies during the Israel-Hamas War

In the November 2022 election that returned Netanyahu to power, Religious Zionism won 14 seats, making it the third largest party in the legislature. Smotrich became finance minister as part of the coalition deal his party made with Netanyahu, who led the election’s largest party but would have been unable to form a government without the support of Smotrich and his far-right party. Smotrich also pressed Netanyahu to pursue a program of judicial reform, which included changing the country’s basic laws to bring the judiciary under legislative oversight. Attempts to enact those reforms in 2023 led to unprecedented strikes and protests by many Israelis, including thousands of army reservists, concerned over the separation of powers. In August senior military officials warned lawmakers that the readiness of the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) for war had begun to weaken. Most Israelis, whether they favored or opposed the reform, considered the unrest to have been a factor in the timing of the brutal Hamas-led attack on Israel on October 7.

As Israel launched the Israel-Hamas War in response to the attack, Smotrich took measures to deny the Palestinian Authority (PA) access to its revenue. Israel collects the majority of the PA’s tax revenue on the PA’s behalf and regularly transfers it to the PA. In 2019, before Smotrich was finance minister, Israel began withholding some of those funds in proportion to the welfare stipend that the PA paid each month to families of Palestinians imprisoned by Israel or killed by Israeli forces—a fund that Israel said incentivized terrorism. After October 7 Smotrich tripled the amount withheld, bringing the PA to the brink of collapse, according to the World Bank. The government also revoked the permits of about 150,000 West Bank Palestinians who worked in Israel, a measure that was considered to be temporary and caused hardship within Israel’s construction industry. Despite recommendations months later by Israel’s defense establishment that Israel gradually allow the workers to return, Smotrich and fellow far-right cabinet member Itamar Ben-Gvir, the minister of national security, blocked efforts to bring a motion to the cabinet that would ease restrictions. In 2024 Smotrich began threatening not to renew waivers that allow Israeli banks to conduct business with banks under the PA, a move that would cause the Palestinian financial system in the West Bank to collapse.

Smotrich also exercised a great deal of influence in Netanyahu’s government on policies related to Israeli settlements. In February 2023 the cabinet created a new Settlements Administration under Smotrich’s oversight, and the military subsequently handed over to the new political body the authority to expropriate land in the West Bank and regulate its use, approve the expansion of existing Israeli settlements, and determine whether buildings constructed by Palestinians have been built legally according to the Israeli government. A document obtained by The New York Times in 2024 revealed that enforcement of regulations restraining Israeli settlement activity became virtually nonexistent when the Settlements Administration was created. The lawlessness in settlement construction was accompanied by a spike in vigilantism by settlers against Palestinians, as Ben-Gvir promoted armed neighborhood watches in the settlements and loosened law enforcement against settlers’ use of violence.

In August 2024, as the Gaza Strip’s densely packed population faced famine, disease, and widespread destruction, Smotrich indicated that “it might be justified and moral” for Israel to starve Gazans until the Israeli hostages held by Hamas since October 7 are released. The comment drew strong international condemnation.