Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich urged on Sunday to topple the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank.
Smotrich made the comments at the funeral of Yehuda Shmuel Sherman, an 18-year-old from the Israeli settlement of Elon Moreh who was killed on Saturday after a collision with a Palestinian vehicle.
“We will follow in Yehuda’s footsteps – we will topple the authority of evil and terror known as the Palestinian Authority,” the minister said.
Smotrich, who is also responsible for the Civil Administration, the Israeli governing body in the West Bank, added that the government intends to resettle several outposts in the north of the territory, which were demolished in 2005 alongside Israel’s disengagement from Gaza.
“We are erasing the lines and the definitions – settling our land in all its expanses. We are striking the enemies on all fronts, and we will strike them here in Judea and Samaria as well,” the minister said, referring to the West Bank by its biblical name.
The victim’s father, Yehoshua Sherman, who is an active member of Smotrich’s Religious Zionism party, called on the government to erase the “shame of the Oslo Accords.”
“The generation growing up here knows that the whole Land of Israel is ours,” he said, announcing that three new settlement outposts will be established in the northern West Bank in his son’s memory.
Yossi Dagan, head of the Samaria Regional Council, also vowed at Sherman’s graveside that “northern Samaria will be rebuilt in your way, and it will be ten times what it was before the expulsion.”
Over 20 settler attacks were reported Saturday night, following Sherman’s death, an Israeli defense official said. A source with Israel Police said no Israelis involved in the attacks were arrested, as of Sunday morning.
Reports were also received of settlers throwing stones at Palestinians, spraying graffiti, firing fireworks in Palestinian villages and blocking roads.