Finance Minister Betzalel Smotrich held a press conference on Tuesday afternoon following the reports that the International Criminal Court has issued a secret arrest warrant against him.

At the start of his remarks, he said: “Last night I was informed that the prosecutor of the antisemitic court in The Hague submitted a request for a secret international arrest warrant against me. This request joins the unprecedented arrest warrants issued against Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu and former Defense Minister Yoav Gallant. The clumsy attempt to force upon us a policy of security suicide through sanctions and arrest warrants will not succeed.”

“Issuing arrest warrants against the prime minister is a declaration of war. Issuing arrest warrants against the defense minister and against the finance minister is a declaration of war. And in the face of a declaration of war, we will respond forcefully. I am not a submissive Jew. No. The Palestinian Authority launched a war, and it will receive war.”

It should be noted that Smotrich’s arrest warrant was issued after the Palestinian mission to the Hague submitted material to ICC prosecutors alleging war crimes and crimes against humanity committed by Israeli settlers and security forces, while also arguing that Israel has failed to prosecute those allegedly responsible.

“Immediately after I finish speaking here, I will sign an order for the evacuation of Khan al-Ahmar as part of my authority as a minister in the Defense Ministry,” Smotrich vowed. “I promise all our enemies: this is only the beginning.”

Khan Al-Ahmar is an illegal Palestinian village east of Jerusalem.

“The hands may be those of The Hague, but the voice is the voice of the Palestinian Authority — the terrorist organization mistakenly referred to as the Palestinian Authority. The despicable body established as part of the shameful Oslo accords is, by all indications, the one behind the attack on the Israeli prime minister and ministers who dare to implement policies that stand up to this terrorist organization.

“During this term, I did not make noise—I simply acted. I acted, and Baruch Hashem, I succeeded in fulfilling my duty as finance minister and kept Israel’s economy stable in the stormy waters of a multi-front war unlike anything Israel has known since its founding. I had the privilege of leading a revolution in the cradle of our eternal biblical homeland, Yehuda and Shomron. I did not do this only for my pioneering settler brothers and friends, but because this is how I see the good of the entire State of Israel. I did it for the citizens of Israel, for their safety and security.”

“I did it to prevent you, my brothers and sisters, the citizens of Israel, from facing a terrible and tangible danger — a danger that, after the horrific massacre carried out against us by Hamas’s Nazis on October 7, we understand just how real it is.

“For years, Israel hesitated and feared to say the obvious: this is our land, and we will act in it as the homeowners. In the past three and a half years, we have done exactly that, and I am proud to lead this dramatic change. We led a revolution. We thwarted the dangerous Fayyad Plan, which intended to create territorial chokeholds around Rosh HaAyin, Modi’in, and Kfar Saba. We established more than 100 new yishuvim and, along with them, 160 agricultural farms that safeguard more than a million dunams of state land.

(The Fayyad Plan is a PA plan (encouraged by the EU) to build a Palestinian state from the bottom up by taking control of Area C by seizing strategically located land and traffic routes, and isolating Jewish communities.)

“We are planning, building, paving, regulating, and making the pioneering settlement enterprise into something irreversible. I am proud of all of this — very proud.”

“On a personal level, they don’t intimidate me. I am prepared to pay a personal price to serve my nation. If this is the price I must pay, I do so with pride and with my head held high. But on the national level, they are not harming Binyamin Netanyahu or Betzalel Smotrich; they are trying to harm the prime minister and finance minister of the State of Israel.”

“As a sovereign and independent state, we will not accept hypocritical dictates from biased bodies that consistently stand against the State of Israel, against our biblical, historical, and legal rights in our homeland, and against our right and duty to self-defense and security.

(YWN Israel Desk—Jerusalem)