AN ISRAELI MINISTER has been suspended from government meetings “until further notice”, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office has said, after suggesting in an interview dropping a nuclear bomb on Gaza.

The comments by Heritage Minister Amichai Eliyahu advocating a fierce military response to Hamas’s 7 October attacks even at the cost of the lives of hostages believed to be held in Gaza also drew rebuke from families of the captives.

Eliyahu, an ultranationalist politician part of Netnayahu’s ruling coalition, told Israel’s Kol Barama radio he was not entirely satisfied with the scale of Israel’s retaliation in the Palestinian territory after Hamas fighters carried out their deadly attacks inside southern Israel.

The attacks killed 1,400 people, mostly civilians, Israeli officials say.

Israel’s military campaign in Gaza since 7 October has killed 9,488 people, most of them women and children, the Hamas-run health ministry says.

When the interviewer asked whether the Israeli minister advocated dropping “some kind of atomic bomb” on the Gaza Strip “to kill everyone”, Eliyahu replied: “That’s one option.”

Netanyahu’s office quickly responded in a statement, describing Eliyahu’s remarks as “disconnected from reality” and adding that Israel was trying to spare “non-combatants” in Gaza.

In a follow-up question about the estimated 240 hostages held in Gaza, Eliyahu said that “in war we pay a price”.

“Why are the lives of the hostages … more important than the lives of the soldiers?” he said.

The Hostages and Missing Persons Families Forum, representing relatives of people snatched to Gaza by Hamas militants, slammed Eliyahu’s “reckless and cruel” statement.

“International law, along with fundamental principles of human morality and common sense, strictly prohibits the use of mass destruction weapons,” it said in a statement, calling for the release of all the hostages.

Following the outcry over his remarks, Eliyahu said in a post on X, formerly Twitter, that his statement about the atomic bomb was “metaphorical”.

He also said that Israel was “committed to doing everything possible to return the hostages safe and sound”.

Israel has never admitted to having a nuclear bomb.

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Arab League chief Ahmed Aboul Gheit said Eliyahu’s remarks reveal that “Israel possesses nuclear weapons, which is an open secret”.

“But it confirms the truth of the racist view Israelis hold against Palestinians. This is the true face of the occupation government.”

Saudi Arabia criticised the Netanyahu government for not dismissing him.

“Failing to immediately dismiss the minister from the government and simply freezing his membership reflects the height of disdain for all human, moral, religious and legal standards and values of the Israeli government,” the Saudi foreign ministry said in a statement.

Jordan said the minister’s remarks were a “call for genocide and a hate crime” against the Palestinians.

- © AFP 2023