TEL AVIV — Israel’s heritage minister Amichai Eliyahu said on Sunday that one of Israel’s options could be to drop a nuclear bomb on the Gaza Strip.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu disavowed his cabinet minister’s comment and suspended him from meetings.
Eliyahu, a member of the far-right Jewish Power party, made the comment in response to a question during a radio interview.
“Your expectation is that tomorrow morning we’d drop what amounts to some kind of nuclear bomb on all of Gaza, flattening them, eliminating everybody there,” the Radio Kol Berama interviewer said.
“That’s one way,” Eliyahu responded. “The second way is to work out what’s important to them, what scares them, what deters them… They’re not scared of death.”
When the minister was told there are around 240 hostages currently held in the Gaza Strip, he doubled down.
“I pray and hope for their return, but there is a price to be paid in war,” he said. “Why are the lives of the abductees, whose release I really want, more important than the lives of the soldiers and the people who will be murdered later?”
The Israeli minister also voiced objection to allowing any humanitarian aid into Gaza, saying “we wouldn’t hand the Nazis humanitarian aid”. — Euronews