World News | Israeli Finance Minister Smotrich Will Meet with Treasury Secretary Bessent in Washington

Washington, Feb 27 (AP) Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich will head to Washington in the coming days to meet with US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and discuss economic and political cooperation, Smotrich's spokesperson said Thursday.

Smotrich was invited by Bessent in a call two weeks ago, said Smotrich's spokesperson, Eitan Fuld, and they'll meet around the weekend of March 8-9.

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It would mark the first in-person talks between Smotrich, a fervent settler advocate at the helm of Israel's settlement planning apparatus, and a Trump administration official — and it could have major implications for US policy toward the settlements, which the international community largely considers illegal.

“We're strengthening the ties, the working relations,” Fuld said. “There are also professional issues on the agenda.”

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Smotrich, a key partner in Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's governing coalition, supports the reoccupation of Gaza, the rebuilding of Jewish settlements that were removed in 2005, and what he describes as the voluntary migration of large numbers of Palestinians out of the territory.

He's coming to the US after President Donald Trump, on his first day in office, cancelled sanctions against extremist Israeli settlers accused of violence against Palestinians in the Israeli-occupied West Bank.

The reversal of the Biden administration's sanctions set the tone for a presidency that has been more tolerant of Israel's expansion of settlements and of violence toward Palestinians. In Trump's previous term he lavished support on Israel, and the Republican has again surrounded himself with aides who back the settlers.

Most recently, Trump has proposed expelling more than 2 million Palestinians from Gaza and transforming the strip into a “Riviera." On Wednesday, he posted an artificial intelligence-generated video on his Truth Social platform envisioning Gaza as a resort-style destination including a golden statute of him.

Smotrich has called for Israel to occupy Gaza and annex the West Bank, and he urged Netanyahu to advocate Israeli sovereignty over the West Bank when the prime minister visited Washington earlier this month.

Israel captured the West Bank in the 1967 Mideast war and has built about 130 settlements and dozens of settlement outposts in a bid to cement its control over the territory. The Palestinians seek the area as the heartland of a future state and say the presence of settlements makes independence impossible. (AP)

(The above story is verified and authored by Press Trust of India (PTI) staff. PTI, India’s premier news agency, employs more than 400 journalists and 500 stringers to cover almost every district and small town in India.. The views appearing in the above post do not reflect the opinions of LatestLY)