This came a day after the Israeli occupation army announced the killing of five soldiers and the wounding of 14 others in an ambush north of the Gaza Strip on Monday.
In a post on the X platform, Ben-Gvir called on Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to "immediately return the delegation that went to negotiate with Hamas in Doha."
He considered that there is "no need to negotiate" with those who kill Israeli soldiers, and that they "should be crushed to the bone and starved to death, not suffocated with humanitarian aid that supplies them with oxygen," as he put it.
Ben-Gvir believed that "a comprehensive siege, military crushing, and the encouragement of immigration and settlement are the keys to complete victory," as he put it, rather than a "reckless deal" that would release thousands of Palestinians and withdraw the occupation army from the lands it occupied in the Gaza Strip.
For his part, Smotrich, on Twitter, called on Netanyahu and Chief of Staff Eyal Zamir to "immediately stop" allowing aid into Gaza, where Israeli soldiers are being killed. He urged the government to "besiege the combat zones and exhaust the enemy there before they confront our soldiers."
He also called for "declaring that no occupied land will be abandoned," adding, "It is illogical, even in the context of a hostage deal, to allow the enemy to re-establish its presence in the region and expose our soldiers to danger again by having to invade it again and again... This is not how we win war," he said.
This morning, Tuesday, the Israeli occupation army announced the killing of five soldiers and the wounding of 14 others, including two seriously, as a result of explosive device explosions and gunfire in Beit Hanoun, north of the Gaza Strip.
For its part, the Qassam Brigades, the military wing of Hamas, posted a photo on Telegram threatening further targeted ambushes.
She wrote: "Your army's prestige will support you. The funerals and corpses of enemy (Israeli) soldiers will become a permanent and ongoing event, God willing, as long as the occupation's aggression and criminal war against our people continues."
The Qassam Brigades' qualitative ambush comes despite the ongoing Israeli genocide in the Gaza Strip, with full US support. Furthermore, Tel Aviv maintains strict oversight of its losses, which likely means the number of dead and wounded will rise.
The ambush also coincides with the resumption of indirect negotiations between Hamas and Israel in Doha regarding a ceasefire and prisoner exchange agreement. Netanyahu has been stalling and insisting on continuing the genocide, while the Palestinian movement has agreed to previous proposals.
Since October 7, 2023, Israel, with US support, has been committing genocide in Gaza, including killing, starvation, destruction, and forced displacement, ignoring international calls and orders from the International Court of Justice to halt it.
The genocide left more than 194,000 Palestinians dead or wounded, most of them children and women, and more than 10,000 missing, in addition to hundreds of thousands displaced.
