Israel’s Jerusalem Affairs and Heritage Minister Amichai Eliyahu said on Sunday that dropping a nuclear weapon on the Gaza Strip is “an option”, according to Haaretz.
The minister made the comments in a radio interview during which he maintained that “there are no non-combatants in Gaza”, adding that providing humanitarian aid to the Strip would constitute “a failure”.
Eliyahu was then asked if, since there are no non-combatants in his view, a nuclear attack on the Gaza Strip is an option. “That’s one way,” he responded.
When asked about the fate of Palestinians, he said: “They can go to Ireland or deserts, the monsters in Gaza should find a solution by themselves.”
He also said the Gaza Strip has no right to exist, adding that anyone waving a Palestinian or Hamas flag “shouldn’t continue living on the face of the earth”.
Firing is ‘meaningless’, ministers say
However, Israeli government ministers reportedly said that Netanyahu’s suspension of Eliyahu is “meaningless”, Israeli media reported.
“This is a joke, there barely are any cabinet meetings anyway, and most of the work is being done in rounds of votes by phone,” an unnamed minister is quoted as saying by the Ynet news site.
A cabinet meeting scheduled for Sunday has been cancelled, with no alternative date set.
This is not the first time Israeli leaders and ministers have deployed dehumanising and incendiary rhetoric in public and used the language of collective punishment when describing their military response to Hamas’s unprecedented attack on Israeli southern towns on 7 October.
Palestinians have been described as “human animals” and “beasts”, with one former Israeli general saying his military “must create an unprecedented humanitarian disaster in Gaza”.
At least 9,488 people have been killed, including 3,900 children and 2,500 women, since Israel started its most aggressive bombing campaign in Gaza since the start of the war.
The Israeli military has decimated entire neighbourhoods, and continuously targeted hospitals, bakeries, civilian infrastrure, mosques, and schools sheltering thousands of displaced people. It also laid a total siege on the already-blockaded enclave.
Netanyahu and other politicians have spoken in apocalyptic terms about enacting revenge.
“We will destroy them and we will forcefully avenge this dark day that they have forced on the state of Israel and its citizens,” Netanyahu said on 8 October.
