US approves visa for Israel's Smotrich after backtracking 'wipe out' statement
The State Department confirmed that Israel’s Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich will receive a diplomatic visa ahead of his visit to the United States next week.
News site Axios reported on Thursday evening that the United States has approved the request of far-right Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich for a diplomatic visa ahead of his trip to Washington on Sunday.
The approval comes after Smotrich backtracked his statement last week calling to "wipe out" the Palestinian town of Huwara of nearly 7,000 residents. Following a week of outrage at his comments and worldwide condemnations, Smotrich published on his Facebook page a long post, retracting his statement on Wednesday.
Smotrich, who is the finance minister and also a minister in the Defense Ministry in charge of civilian affairs in the West Bank, explained that he did some "soul searching" and it was comments by a close friend of his, a senior reserve pilot in the Israel Defense Forces, that made him change his mind.
According to the post, the pilot told Smotrich that his statement on Huwara was interpreted by fellow Israeli army pilots as a call for them to bomb and destroy the Palestinian village. Smotrich claimed that when calling to wipe out the village, he only called to destroy some of the houses alongside the main road as deterrence against more terror attacks. He did not intend, he wrote, to call for or imply people should be harmed.
