Israeli ambassador to the UK Tzipi Hotovely did not deny that she was arguing for “destroying the whole of Gaza” in an LBC interview on Wednesday.
As she explained that Israel expected the war to roll on for at least a few more months, Hotovely also responded to scrutiny about how Gaza has been bombarded in recent months.
According to the Hamas-controlled health ministry in Gaza, more than 22,000 people in the Palestinian territory have died since October 7. It does not differentiate between Hamas fighters and civilians.
Israel declared war and put Gaza under siege after the Palestinian militants, Hamas, killed an estimated 1,200 people on Israel soil and abducted 240 others.
LBC presenter Iain Dale asked Hotovely about the scenes of “devastation” coming from Gaza right now, where whole communities have been hit by the Israeli strikes.
According to the UN, 85% of Gaza’s population (1.9 million people) have been displaced since the war began amid Israel’s attacks.
Hotovely replied: ″I really want to mention that Gaza has an underground tunnel city, and in order to get to this underground tunnel city those areas must be destroyed.
“And one of the things we exposed to the world after getting into the areas in Gaza that we try to find all those tunnels and underground metro-city that Hamas has built thanks to this great support of Iran, Qatar, the international community’s generosity, everything turned into this horrible terror city.
″One of the things we realised is that every school, every mosque, every second house, has access to the tunnels. And of course ammunition.”
Dale said: “That’s an argument for destroying the whole of Gaza, every single building in it.”
The ambassador replied: “So, do you have another solution to destroy the underground tunnel city? This is the place where the terrorists hide, where they have all their ammunitions.
“And these are the rockets that is still being fired on Israeli cities.”
Hotovely is not the only representative from Israel to have strengthened their rhetoric against Gaza recently.
Israeli finance minister Bezalel Smotirch said on Sunday: “What needs to be done in the Gaza Strip is to encourage emigration.”
He referred to Gaza as a “ghetto” and added: “If in Gaza there will be 100,000 or 200,000 Arabs and not 2 million, the entire conversation on ‘the day after’ will look different.”
National security minister Itamar Ben Gvir said on Monday that the ongoing war was “an opportunity to concentrate on encouraging the migration of the residents of Gaza”.
He then claimed it was “a correct, just, moral and humane solution”.
Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu also told a lawmaker who had pushed for “voluntary immigration” from Gaza, said he was “working on it.”
These comments have not been well-received in either the UK or the US.
The UK’s foreign office said: “Gaza is Occupied Palestinian Territory and will be part of a future Palestinian state. The UK firmly rejects any suggestion of the resettlement of Palestinians outside of Gaza.
“We share the concerns of our allies and partners that Gazans should not be subject to forcible displacement or relocation from Gaza.”
Lord Tariq Ahmad, foreign office minister, also tweeted: “Alongside our international partners, we deplore inflammatory remarks by Israeli ministers Smotrich and Ben Gvir.”
A US State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller said the US – Israel’s closest ally – thought this was “inflammatory and irresponsible”.
Human rights experts are worried, too – Francesca Albanese, the UN special rapporteur non the occupied Palestinian territories, told Democracy Now that this was not “voluntary migration” but “forced displacement”.