Hamas says Israeli minister’s call to Gazans is ‘explicit embrace of genocide policy’

​​​​​​​GAZA CITY, Palestine (AA) - Hamas said Thursday that Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich's call to starve 2 million Palestinians in the Gaza Strip is an “an explicit embrace of a policy of genocide.”

“The statement by the Nazi Smotrich, where he claimed that starving two million Palestinians in Gaza is ‘justified and moral,’ is a blatant admission of the occupation's premeditated intent and its actual adoption of a genocidal policy in Gaza,” Izzat al-Risheq, a member of Hamas’s political bureau, said in a statement.

“Typically, criminals hide their crimes, but we are dealing with a brazen enemy who openly boasts about his heinous acts,” he said.

Al-Risheq urged the International Criminal Court (ICC) to issue an arrest warrant for “Smotrich the terrorist who promotes and supports genocide,” and to hold him and his gang accountable.

The Palestinian Foreign Ministry also encouraged the ICC to issue an arrest warrant for Smotrich because of his comments.

Palestinian Presidential spokesperson Nabil Abu Rudeineh condemned the Smotrich comments and described them as “a war crime for which occupation leaders must be held accountable.”

Abu Rudeineh, in a statement published by the official Palestinian news agency, said the remarks are “provocative actions in which the occupying state defies the world.”

Smotrich said Monday that letting 2 million people in Gaza die from hunger might be “justified and moral.”

Amnesty International said in February that Israel was defying an International Court of Justice (ICJ) ruling to prevent genocide by failing to allow adequate humanitarian aid into Gaza.

Israel has imposed a crippling blockade on Gaza since an Oct. 7, 2023 attack by the Palestinian resistance group, Hamas, leaving the entire population of the enclave on the verge of famine.

Flouting a UN Security Council resolution demanding an immediate cease-fire, Israel has faced international condemnation amid its continued brutal offensive on Gaza.

Nearly 40,000 Palestinians have since been killed, mostly women and children, and over 91,700 injured, according to local health authorities.

More than 10 months into the Israeli onslaught, vast tracts of Gaza lie in ruins amid a crippling blockade of food, clean water and medicine.

Israel is accused of genocide at the ICJ, which ordered Tel Aviv to immediately halt its military operation in the southern city of Rafah, where more than 1 million Palestinians had sought refuge from the war before it was invaded on May 6.

*Writing by Mohammad Sio