JERUSALEM: Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich used a Jerusalem appearance last week to argue for a permanent shift in Israeli military strategy, telling a room of political and security officials that territory, not the number of enemy fighters killed, is what actually forces Israel’s enemies to change course.
Smotrich was interviewed on stage by political journalist Amit Segal at the Israel365 summit in Jerusalem, where he laid out a case he said he has made directly to Israel’s military leadership.
“There is only one thing that hurts the enemy: land”
Smotrich said Israel has long measured success the wrong way. He described how the IDF briefs the security cabinet after major operations with statistics like terrorists killed and munitions dropped, numbers that are then repeated on the news as proof of victory. He said he has pushed back on that framework directly with the IDF Chief of Staff, comparing it to a CEO who reports to his board on how much money he spent rather than what he actually achieved.
That approach fails, Smotrich argued, because Israel’s enemies don’t value life the way Israel does. “There is only one thing that hurts the enemy,” he said, “and that is land.” He called for Israel to adopt a standing principle: any group that attacks Israel forfeits territory permanently. “Whoever takes us on will lose land forever,” he said.
He pointed to 1967 as proof. No one today disputes that the Six-Day War was a decisive Israeli victory, he said, because Israel came out of it holding territory. He drew the same lesson from Gaza, where Hamas took control within two years of Israel’s 2005 withdrawal and spent the next decade and a half building the military infrastructure it used against Israeli civilians on October 7, 2023.
A closed-door meeting with Witkoff
Smotrich also shared new details from a closed-door meeting with Steve Witkoff, President Trump’s Middle East envoy, held shortly after Witkoff’s appointment in a small forum that also included Strategic Affairs Minister Ron Dermer. The meeting took place one day after Witkoff had toured Gaza and been shown footage of the October 7 massacre.
The footage, Smotrich said, left Witkoff visibly shaken. He quoted the envoy telling him directly: “Bezalel, I will not let two million Nazis live next to your children on the other side of a fence.”
Smotrich pointed to the exchange as a sign that Washington’s posture on Gaza’s future has hardened alongside Israel’s own. He also repeated his call for Israel to maintain a long-term security buffer inside southern Lebanon, rather than return to the temporary arrangements of the past.
