Betul Yilmaz
30 September 2025•Update: 30 September 2025
ISTANBUL
Israel’s far-right Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich decried on Tuesday a peace plan announced by US President Donald Trump to end the Gaza war as a "tragedy" and failure of the Benjamin Netanyahu government.
“In my view, this is also going to end in tears. Our children will be forced to fight in Gaza again,” Smotrich said on the US social media company X.
“This is what Einstein defined as pure stupidity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result,” he said, citing a two-state formula, the formation of Palestinian police trained in Egypt and Jordan, and including Qatar as a mediator in the ceasefire negotiations.
The extremist minister criticized the endorsement of Trump’s plan by Netanyahu and what he called his “initial unwillingness to occupy Gaza.”
Smotrich also denounced what he termed “absurd celebrations” of the plan as “a tragedy of leadership fleeing from the truth.”
On Monday, Trump unveiled a 20-point plan to end Israel's war on Gaza during a press conference with Netanyahu at the White House.
The plan calls for the release of all Israeli captives in exchange for dozens of Palestinian prisoners, complete disarmament of Hamas, a gradual withdrawal of Israeli forces, and the formation of a technocratic, apolitical Palestinian committee to govern the enclave.
The Israeli army has killed over 66,000 Palestinians, most of them women and children, in Gaza since October 2023. The relentless bombardment has rendered the enclave uninhabitable and led to starvation and the spread of diseases.
