Courtesy of JNS. Photo credit: Yonatan Sindel/Flash90
Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich attends a press conference on the plan for the return of residents of northern Israel to their homes, on Jan. 5, 2025
(JNS) — Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich on Friday called for an immediate resumption of the war against Hamas in the Gaza Strip, on the backdrop of the Palestinian terrorist group’s failure to deliver to Jerusalem the body of hostage Shiri Bibas and following a coordinated bus bombing attack near Tel Aviv.
“Hamas’s serious violation and ongoing abuse cannot be passed over in silence, including the certain knowledge that they brutally murdered little Ariel and Kfir [Bibas] in captivity. The only solution is the destruction of Hamas, and this must not be postponed,” tweeted Smotrich.
“Every day that passes without a return to the destruction of Hamas is interpreted as weakness, and we may, God forbid, pay expensive and painful prices for this, like on October 7, [2023],” he added.
One of the four bodies that Israel received from Hamas on Thursday, which the terrorist organization said was that of the boys’ mother, Shiri Bibis, belongs to an unidentified woman, the Israel Defense Forces said on Friday morning.
The National Institute of Forensic Medicine in Tel Aviv and the Israel Police identified two of the returned bodies as those of Ariel and Kfir, whom terrorists “brutally murdered” in captivity in November 2023, the Israeli military said. At that time, the boys would have been 4 years and 10 months old, respectively.
The fourth body was identified as that of Oded Lifshitz.
“For 16 months in which we’ve fought terrorism on all fronts — with strength, bravery and determination — we did not allow it to raise its head,” wrote Smotrich in a separate tweet on Thursday.
“As we feared, the mass release of terrorists and the ceasefire are interpreted by our enemies as weakness and are giving a tailwind to the terror forces, who are threatening to once again blow up buses in city centers, as they did during the Second Intifada,” he continued.
The finance minister was referring to the explosions on Thursday night that occurred in parked, empty buses in the central cities of Bat Yam and Holon, located south of Tel Aviv.
There were no injuries in the attack.
Five explosive devices, all with timers set to go off simultaneously, were found in what was intended to be a “strategic terrorist attack,” Channel 12 cited security sources as saying.
“Our response must be an immediate return to fighting and systematically crushing terrorism until it is destroyed, in Gaza and Judea and Samaria. We will make sure that this will be the case,” Smotrich said.
