Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich has laid out a sweeping vision for Israeli control over Gaza and Judea and Samaria (West Bank), declaring the time has come for Israel to “free itself from wrong concepts” about a Palestinian state.

“We can and must apply Israeli sovereignty,” Smotrich told evangelicals at the Middle East Summit in Jerusalem on Sunday. “The establishment of new cities and settlements deep in Judea and Samaria and bringing hundreds of thousands of additional settlers to live in them is paramount.”

The Religious Zionism party leader argued that Arabs would need to accept limited local governance or leave. Under his proposal, those unwilling to forgo national aspirations would “receive assistance from us to emigrate to one of the many Arab countries where the Arabs can realize their national ambitions.”

Regarding Gaza, Smotrich stressed the necessity of maintaining both civilian and military control, warning that “where there is no civilian presence, there is no long-term military presence,” and that abandoning such presence creates “an existential threat to the State of Israel.”

While calling for firm Israeli control, Smotrich painted an optimistic picture of future regional cooperation through expanded Abraham Accords, contingent upon Western powers taking action to “overthrow the ayatollah regime in Iran and eliminate its nuclear project that threatens the State of Israel and the entire Western world.”