The Cradle | September 27, 2026

Israeli Finance Minister and settler leader Bezalel Smotrich has called on Israel to “go to war” in the occupied Palestinian West Bank and “do there what we did in Gaza,” Israeli media reported on 27 September.

“I certainly have solutions” to the situation in the West Bank, he said. “I think we need to go to war in Judea and Samaria, to do there what we did in Gaza, to dismantle the Palestinian Authority, which is a terror authority.”

The Religious Zionism Party leader also called on Israel to annex the areas of southern Lebanon and Gaza occupied by Israeli troops.

“I would very much like to annex at least up to the Yellow Line in Gaza and up to the Litani [River] in Lebanon,” he says.

As part of its genocide of Palestinians since 2023, Israel has occupied an estimated 70 percent of Gaza, which is divided by a yellow line demarcating areas under direct Israeli occupation from those remaining under Hamas control.

Israel has also occupied territory in Lebanon amounting to 7 percent of the entire country.

Israel carries out demolition campaigns in both, seeking to wipe out any trace of Palestinian and Lebanese villages and cities already largely destroyed by Israeli bombing.

Smotrich made the comments after he was asked on a podcast how to advance Israel’s project in the West Bank amid Palestinian resistance.

Israel has accelerated its construction of illegal Jewish settlements and outposts in the West Bank this year, including in the E1 settlement.

E1 is designed to cut the West Bank in half and separate it from occupied East Jerusalem, making the establishment of a territorially contiguous Palestinian state impossible.

At the same time, Jewish settlers enjoying protection of the army regularly carry out violent pogrom-style attacks on Palestinian villages in hopes of forcing Palestinians to abandon their homes and agricultural lands.

In response, Palestinians have carried out several car ramming and shooting operations targeting Jewish settlers in recent weeks.

Smotrich also repeated his call to dismantle the Palestinian Authority (PA), which provides civil administration to parts of the West Bank, including the Palestinian cities such as Ramallah, Nablus, Jenin and Bethlehem.

The PA was established following the Oslo Accords in 1993 to serve as an interim government until the establishment of a Palestinian state.

However, the PA has in practice served as an arm of the Israeli occupation, assisting the Israeli military in suppressing Palestinian resistance.

Smotrich has previously called on Israel to annex more than 80 percent of the West Bank, which Israel conquered in 1967.

Since then, Israel has established some 160 Jewish settlements and 360 outposts, housing more than 700,000 Jewish settlers as part of a long-term campaign to colonize and Judaize the Palestinian territories.

In his campaign for next month’s Knesset election, Smotrich has touted the expansion of Israeli settlements under the current coalition government, which includes Smotrich, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, and National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir.

As head of the Likud Party, Netanyahu is seeking his seventh term as prime minister. Ben Gvir leads a religious nationalist party, Jewish Power, known for its extremism and calls for violence against Palestinians.

Meanwhile, Israeli authorities decided to impose a week-long “comprehensive closure” on the occupied West Bank, closing crossings to the territory until Saturday for the Jewish religious holiday of Sukkot.

The order will prevent Palestinians with work permits from entering Israel and Jewish settlements to go to their jobs.

Local sources told the Wafa News Agency that the entrance gate to Turmus Ayya, north of Ramallah, was closed and residents were “harassed.”

Wafa also reported that entrances to Aboud, Nabi Saleh, Atara and Taybeh were closed, while military checkpoints were set up at the entrances to Yabroud and Ein Sinyah.

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Israel's machinery of cruelty never rests. We've been tracking the news you need to know – concise, accurate, relevant, and with context that makes sense of it all

For the last several days, Israeli forces have blocked the main entrances and exits to the central West Bank governorate of Ramallah and Al-Bireh, further restricting Palestinian movement.

The punitive measure was taken after a Palestinian man carried out a shooting attack near the illegal settlement of Halamish, located to the northwest of Ramallah in the Occupied West Bank, on Sunday, September 20.

The attack resulted in the killing of an Israeli settler. The assailant was also injured and later identified as Qadri Samara (37). Samara was shot at by Israeli soldiers stationed at an army post near the site of the attack.

Although Samara managed to withdraw from the scene, later in the day Israeli forces carried out a raid at the HClinic Hospital in Ramallah and arrested him.

Following his arrest, the Israeli army also stormed Samara’s town of Biddu, northwest of Jerusalem, on Sunday evening, raiding his home and surrounding worshippers inside a mosque.

Ben-Gvir calls for implementation of death penalty law for the first time on Samara

In a security meeting held on Monday, September 21, Israeli National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir called for the controversial death penalty law, mandated in March, to be used against Qadri Samara.

The law has faced widespread condemnation from international human rights groups for multiple reasons, mainly because it applies exclusively to Palestinians, while exempting Israelis convicted of the same offenses from the same penalty.

Both Israeli soldiers and illegal settlers have enjoyed total impunity despite murdering thousands of Palestinians over the past two decades in the occupied West Bank, a territory regarded under Palestinian jurisdiction in accordance with international law.

Iranian news outlet Press TV called the detention of its West Bank correspondent Naqaa Hamed by the Israeli forces an “aggressive terrorist operation” aimed at silencing the truth about its occupation and genocide of Palestinians. It demanded the immediate intervention of the international community for her release.

“The desperate attempt by the Zionist war and security machine to block the flow of free news and boycott structured crimes in the West Bank is clear evidence of the occupier’s fear of independent” reporters “who expose widespread human right violations,” the Press TV statement, published on Thursday, September 17, said.

Naqaa Hamed was abducted by the Israeli armed forces from a checkpoint at Tuqu, near Bethlehem, in the occupied Palestinian territory on September 15. 

She, along with her cameraman, were returning after reporting about rising Israeli settler violence on Palestinians in Masafer Yatta.

One eyewitness, a TRT journalist accompanying Hamed in her car, claimed that they were detained at the checkpoint and made to sit on the ground for 45 minutes while Hamed was taken alone for interrogation.

After the interrogation, cameraman and TRT journalists were let go but Hamed was arrested and sent to an unknown location.

Later it was reported that her detention has been extended until September 23 by an Israeli court.

Though no official confirmation has come forward about the charges against Hamed, Israeli media quoted unidentified military sources claiming her arrest was linked to her alleged cooperation with “the enemy entity,” presumably Iran, and espionage.

Hamed (38), a Palestinian-American and mother of three children, has been subjected to repeated physical attacks by Israeli forces in the last few months. She has also been subjected to a smear campaign on social media. 

According to Press TV, rubber bullets were fired at her when she was reporting near Qalandia camp in December 2025. She was injured again in August this year by an Israeli stun grenade and tear gas fire.

The intimidation and smear campaigns on social media, started by pages affiliated with the Israeli occupation regime, targeted Hamed by questioning her credibility and calling her a part of the “Iranian propaganda machine.” 

Israel is the worst place to be a journalist

Israel has one of the worst records when it comes to killing and arresting journalists. Hundreds of Palestinian journalists have been either killed or arrested by the Israeli occupation forces since the beginning of the war and genocide in Gaza. 

According to various sources Israel has killed over 250 journalists and media workers in the West Bank and Gaza since October 2023. 

According to the Palestinian Prisoner’s Society, currently nearly 40 Palestinian journalists are in Israeli detention, including five women. Almost half of these journalists are kept in prison under the draconian provision of Administrative Detention, which allows the authorities to keep them in jail for an indefinite period without any formal charges or trial.

The Iranian media channel Press TV underlined that Hamed’s arrest by Israeli forces violates international laws about immunity to journalists in war zones. It demanded the UN, its High Commissioner for Human Rights, and other international human rights groups to come out of their “shell of inaction and meaningful silence” and take measures to end Israel’s impunity.

“As long as responsible institutions remain in the shell of silence and inaction, Naqaa Hamed will not be the first, nor the last journalist to be targeted by the illegal actions of the Zionist regime,” the Press TV statement said.