MARY LOUISE KELLY, HOST:
Israel's finance minister has become arguably the most influential man in the country, alongside Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. He's an ultranationalist and a West Bank settler who has repeatedly called for Israel to resettle the Gaza Strip. He has threatened to collapse Netanyahu's government if the war in Gaza ends. And this week, the war resumed after a 42-day ceasefire ended with Israeli strikes that killed more than 400 Palestinians. NPR's Hadeel Al-Shalchi looks into his rise to power in Israel.
HADEEL AL-SHALCHI, BYLINE: Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich was once a wanted man by Israel's version of the FBI. In 2005, Israel was rocked by mass protests. Israeli settlers were demonstrating against the removal of Jewish settlements from Gaza. At the time, Dvir Kariv was an agent with Israel's internal security agency, the Shin Bet.
DVIR KARIV: (Non-English language spoken).
AL-SHALCHI: Kariv says late on July 11, 2005, they raided a home in central Israel.
KARIV: (Non-English language spoken).
AL-SHALCHI: He says, in the basement, we found several jerry cans filled with a lot of oil and fuel.
KARIV: (Non-English language spoken).
AL-SHALCHI: They arrested five people there. One of them was a student called Bezalel Smotrich. Kariv says the men were interrogated for 3 1/2 weeks.
KARIV: (Non-English language spoken).
AL-SHALCHI: "From the Shin Bet's perspective, we successfully thwarted what Bezalel Smotrich and his group had planned," Kariv says. While he says he can't divulge what that was, Israeli media has reported that Smotrich and his group were planning to blow up a major Israeli highway. Smotrich remained completely silent during his interrogations and was released without charge. He did not give away his secrets, but later, as a politician, he spoke a lot about what drives his political motivations.
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BEZALEL SMOTRICH: (Non-English language spoken).
AL-SHALCHI: "My long-term desire is for the state of Israel to be governed according to the Torah or Jewish holy scripture," he once told Israeli radio.
Smotrich is an ultranationalist religious Zionist, a type of Judaism that branched out from the secular Zionist movement that founded Israel. While many ultrareligious Jews historically rejected the Zionist movement, a minority accepted it. Many of them embraced the settlement movement after Israel took control of the West Bank and Gaza Strip in the war of 1967. Tomer Persico is a scholar of Jewish extremism.
TOMER PERSICO: The more Jews settle the lands that the state of Israel has conquered, the more redemption is coming close. So it's a Messianic movement - very motivated, pious and devoted religion.
AL-SHALCHI: Persico says Smotrich is on the far right of the spectrum of religious Zionism, also known as ultra-Orthodox nationalists, who follow Jewish law and reject values like feminism, liberalism and LGBTQ rights. Smotrich and his followers believe that the Israeli-occupied West Bank is the Jewish people's ancestral home featured in the Bible, a God-given land they must make a permanent part of Israel.
Smotrich, a lawyer, was first elected to parliament in 2015. Two years later, he wrote a manifesto called "Israel's Decisive Plan." In it, he writes how to tackle the main obstacle to settling the West Bank - the Palestinians.
PERSICO: Smotrich gives the Palestinians basically three options - emigrate, surrender and live as, let's say, subjects without the right to vote, or fight and die.
AL-SHALCHI: Only a few years later, Smotrich became the leader of the Religious Zionist Party. Ohad Tal is a lawmaker in Smotrich's party.
OHAD TAL: I think that he's a very clever and smart person who understands the reality. He's presented as somebody radical because people find it hard to accept the truth.
AL-SHALCHI: Smotrich was perfectly poised for what happened in the most recent Israeli national election. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu won and looked for allies to form a coalition, but he's facing trial on corruption charges. Persico says Netanyahu was desperate.
PERSICO: He didn't have anyone else. Because of his ongoing trial, people said they would not sit in parliament with him.
AL-SHALCHI: The only parties that would agree to form a government with Netanyahu were the ultra-Orthodox and religious Zionists, including Smotrich's party. Netanyahu formed a coalition with them, giving them more power than they had ever had before. The prime minister appointed Smotrich as finance minister and to the Ministry of Defense. Jewish extremism scholar Persico.
PERSICO: And in that position, he has basically taken over the civil management of settlers in the occupied territories, meaning he is on the verge of official annexation.
AL-SHALCHI: After the October 2023 attacks on Israel, Netanyahu called on Smotrich to be part of his war cabinet. The finance minister reached for his faith.
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SMOTRICH: (Non-English language spoken).
AL-SHALCHI: "I struggled with this decision and gathered my rabbis to consult with them. After all, I want to influence the war," he told a group of religious students last year in a video posted online.
Smotrich is reported to regularly consult with a group of rabbis known as the Five. Rabbi Yehoshua Shapira is one of them. He has opposed a hostage deal.
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YEHOSHUA SHAPIRA: (Non-English language spoken).
AL-SHALCHI: "There is joy that hostages will return, but despite that joy, this is a very bad deal for Israel," Shapira said in an online lecture.
Persico says Smotrich's faithful devotion is evident every time he threatens to collapse Netanyahu's coalition if the war doesn't continue in Gaza, where he ultimately wants to see Jewish settlements rebuilt.
PERSICO: He is the primal force that is withholding the end of the war.
AL-SHALCHI: Smotrich has leveraged this power to further settler ambitions in the West Bank. Just days after Israel paused the war in January and agreed to a deal with Hamas for the release of hostages, Netanyahu ordered the escalation of incursions in the West Bank, causing massive destruction in urban refugee camps and displacing thousands of Palestinians. Israel says it's to weed out Palestinian militants.
PERSICO: It's very feasible to say this is just a card Netanyahu gave Smotrich in order to appease him when going into the hostage deal.
AL-SHALCHI: Smotrich was sidelined under President Biden's administration for his anti-Palestinian rhetoric, and in Israel, polls show that he would not survive another election. Only 11% of the Israeli population voted for Smotrich's party in the last elections in 2022. This month, Smotrich was invited to Washington, D.C., to meet with his counterpart in President Trump's administration.
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SMOTRICH: (Non-English language spoken).
AL-SHALCHI: Smotrich rarely gives interviews to U.S. Western media. This month, he gave his first press conference since his trip to the U.S., and I posed a question to him.
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AL-SHALCHI: I have two questions. Do you know anything about...
I ask him about plans for the annexation of the West Bank. Smotrich objects to the word annexation.
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SMOTRICH: (Non-English language spoken).
AL-SHALCHI: "Annexation implies taking something that isn't yours," the minister says. "Judea and Samaria" - the biblical name for the West Bank - "belongs to us."
Trump told reporters his administration would announce its position on West Bank annexation by early March. That date has passed.
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SMOTRICH: (Non-English language spoken).
AL-SHALCHI: Smotrich says, "Israel and the U.S. are in dialogue about it, and I prefer not to go into details." I reply...
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AL-SHALCHI: Is Trump the man who will make it happen for you? Will he support you to make it happen?
SMOTRICH: (Non-English language spoken).
AL-SHALCHI: "We believe this is the right thing to do," he says. "We're engaged in discussions and dialogue."
So while Smotrich firmly believes he has God's mandate to take over the West Bank, the question is whether he also has Trump's blessing.
Hadeel Al-Shalchi, NPR News, Jerusalem.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC) Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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