Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich said on Monday that Israel will resume the war on Gaza with great force, claiming that negotiations with Hamas over a prisoner exchange have not progressed, although Smotrich himself opposes such negotiations and calls for an immediate resumption of the war.

Smotrich said in an interview with the Israeli public radio "Kan" that "the new Chief of Staff (Eyal Zamir) began his term planning completely differently than his predecessor. He wants a much more intensive, fast and severe war with the aim of occupying the Gaza Strip, completely annihilating Hamas and returning the kidnapped soldiers. We will do this differently. We will not return to the stupidity of the previous Chief of Staff," Herzi Halevi.

According to Smotrich, "We will have to recruit another (reserve forces) and continue the effort, in order to finish the mission this time. We will not stop in the middle."

Smotrich described direct talks between the United States and Hamas as an "absolute mistake," and claimed that the US envoy for prisoner affairs, Adam Boehler, who held talks with Hamas leaders, was acting "naively," and that Boehler's plan was "nonsense."

Smotrich denied reports that he received information from senior army officers, contrary to the usual procedures and not through reports submitted by the army to the government, about the operations of the Israeli army.

Smotrich accused former IDF Chief of Staff Halevi of "not telling the whole truth to the cabinet and sometimes not telling the truth, and he is a bad strategic man."

He added that Halevi "silences opinions" in the political-security cabinet's deliberations, saying, "I asked to invite the deputy chief of the general staff, the commander of the Northern Command and the head of the Military Intelligence Directorate, who are the most important people in the war in the north, and the chief of the general staff strongly opposed it. This is very dangerous. The chief of the general staff (i.e. Halevi) did not speak with his deputy and the head of the manpower directorate for months."

Smotrich continued, "The attempt to silence opinions that are not from within the army is dangerous in my view.

And when there are no deliberations within the General Staff, and when they bury ideas and plans, if they propose different plans to me for consideration, this seems to me to be the most correct thing to do.”