Ben Gvir calls on Netanyahu to abide by coalition deal on West Bank policies

15 Feb. (EUROPA PRESS) –

The far-right Itamar Ben Gvir, leader of the Otzma Yehudit party and current Minister of National Security, warned Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Wednesday that if he does not respect the coalition agreement on policies in the West Bank, they will be forced to block the Executive .

“We joined the government on the basis of a commitment that it would be completely right-wing and this policy (on the West Bank) cannot continue,” he alluded to in a statement published on his Twitter profile along with his party colleague Son Har Melech, according to the newspaper ‘The Times of Israel’.

Ben Gvir accuses the Israeli prime minister of encouraging campaigns to evict settlers from the occupied Palestinian areas. On Sunday, the Border Police demolished an illegal settlement in the northern West Bank, an event that caused anger among its far-right government partners.

This is in addition to the fact that this same Wednesday there have been protests, attended by the far-right deputy Son Har Melech, to prevent the Border Police from uprooting trees planted without authorization by a settler in the Shilo settlement.

For his part, the leader of the far-right Religious Zionism party, Bezalel Smotrich, has also spoken out in this regard, calling what happened in Shilo “injustice”, assuring that there is “discriminatory treatment” towards the settlers.

“The denial of the unequivocal agreement by the defense minister and the delay by the prime minister are unacceptable and we will not allow them to continue. This is a provision that was clear to all and was central to our agreement,” Smotrich said, according to reports. collected by the newspaper ‘The Jerusalem Post’.

The friction within the Israeli government occurs in the midst of the controversial judicial reform. Opponents of the measure have announced on Wednesday a national strike in front of Parliament for next Monday to request its total withdrawal.