Eliyahu also backed rebuilding the Israeli settlements, adding that Palestinians can “go to Ireland or deserts”.
The Israeli minister also voiced objection to allowing any humanitarian aid into Gaza, saying, “We wouldn’t hand the Nazis humanitarian aid".
He also insisted that the northern part of the Gaza Strip has no right to exist, pointing out that anyone waving a Palestinian or Hamas flag “shouldn’t continue to live on the face of the earth.
His comments were termed as “a horrifying and insane remark,” by Yair Lapid, the leader of the opposition party and former prime minister, asking the Prime Minister Netanyahu to “fire” Eliyahu.
Regarding the 240 captives held in the Gaza Strip, the Israeli heritage minister said that he would pray for them, but “there is a price to be paid in war".
In reaction to the minister's remarks, Lapid said, “He offended the families of the captives [being held in Gaza], offended Israeli society, and harmed our international standing”.
National Unity leader Minister Benny Gantz, a member of the war cabinet, also attacked Eliyahu’s comments in a post on X, saying Eliyahu’s statement was detrimental and caused heavy political damage.
Mansour Abbas, leader of the Arab Ra’am party, wrote on X that Eliyahu was echoing a sentiment expressed by other Israeli officials, and expressed concerns that his comments dehumanized Gazans.
Abbas added that dehumanization and collective punishment is the way to “genocide and war crimes”.
There will be a day after the war — it is not the end of history or Armageddon, the party leader said.
In response to the statements of the Israeli far-right minister, the head of the Meretz faction in the Knesset Zehava Galon said: "The uncultured minister proposes to use a nuclear bomb in Gaza, so what will happen to the Israeli captives?"
She further added: “He says that war costs money! [Well], send your children [to Gaza] so that they will pay for this too, your idol."
Amid the growing concerns over Eliyahu’s statement, Netanyahu’s office announced that he was suspended from cabinet meetings “indefinitely”.
The action by Netanyahu’s office was labeled as “meaningless” by an Israeli official who said, “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”.
To avoid censure, the far-right Eliyahu tweeted that the statement was “metaphorical".
Hamas also reacted to Eliyahu’s remarks in a statement, saying that his approach proves the “terrorist entity” of Israel against the Palestinian nation.
The Islamic Jihad also issued a statement saying Eliyahu’s statement shows the “reality of their (Israelis) crime”.
The Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Palestine censured the Israeli minister’s statement as well, saying the racist and brutal remarks of the Israeli minister are horrifying.
The Saudi Foreign Ministry also condemned the threats of the Israeli minister, saying that the postponement of his dismissal reflects that the humanitarian values are worthless in Israel.
Regardless of being “insane, a junior cabinet member, a far-right minister” or whatever the Israeli officials labeled Eliyahu, he is an official member of the Israeli government who spoke from the heart of the Zionist regime.
The proposal to nuke Gaza by the extremist minister comes from the Tel Aviv regime which has carpeted Gaza with bombs.
In its latest barbaric attack, the Tel Aviv regime bombarded the Maghazi refugee camp in the central Gaza Strip on Saturday evening which left 45 Palestinians killed and a hundred others injured, according to a report published on Sunday by the Hamas Ministry of Health.
“The number of martyrs in the Maghazi massacre has risen to 45,” the ministry said in a statement.
While the occupying regime has kept leading propaganda campaigns against Iran’s nuclear program, calling it a “threat” to the region and world, Amichai Eliyahu officially confessed that Israel has atomic bombs, something which the regime has been mum about it and refused to sign the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT).
It is said that Israel has had a nuclear program since the 1950s, but it has never confirmed or denied having nuclear weapons and has adopted an ambiguous policy in this regard.
The Negev Nuclear Research Center, 10 kilometers from the city of Dimona, is Israel's most important nuclear site. In 1986, an Israeli nuclear technician, for the first time, provided information and images from inside the Dimona reactor and Israeli nuclear warheads to the British weekly newspaper Sunday Times.
According to
Jane's Defence Weekly
, Israel is the sixth nuclear power in the world. The Janes has also said that Israel has 100 to 300 nuclear warheads, which is equal to England’s nuclear warheads.
Nuke threat indicative of Israeli failure
The proposal to drop nuclear bombs on Gaza indicates successive defeats that Tel Aviv has faced since October 7.
Following the irreparable defeat on October 7, the occupying regime launched war crimes at an unprecedented level in Gaza, bombarding residential areas, schools, and hospitals, and cutting off water, food, medicine, and other essential items to the enclave.
Yet none of the brutalities have helped Israeli officials to hide their defeats.
The Israeli image of invincibility, intelligence, AI, and military have all gone with the wind.
The scale of the defeat has left the Israeli leaders with no choice except to threaten the Gaza Strip with “nukes”.
The ground attacks on Gaza, followed by nearly a month of airstrikes, have also aggravated the condition for Tel Aviv. The regime has achieved nothing in the ground offensive. It has just lost more soldiers.
Needless to say, Israel has so far dropped equal to 2 nuclear bombs on the Gaza Strip.
The Euro-Mediterranean Human Rights Monitor announced that Israel has used more than 25,000 tons of explosives in the Gaza Strip, which is equivalent to two nuclear bombs.
By Ali Ahmadi
First Published by Tehran Times
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