On Sunday, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office said that an Israeli minister had been barred from cabinet meetings “until further notice” after suggesting in an interview that Israel launch a nuclear weapon on Gaza.
Heritage Minister Amichay Eliyahu, an ultranationalist politician in Netnayahu’s ruling coalition, told Israel’s Kol Barama radio that the scale of Israel’s retaliation in Palestinian territory after Hamas fighters carried out a deadly attack inside southern Israel on October 7 was not entirely satisfactory.
The attacks killed 1,400 people, mostly civilians, Israeli officials say.
Israel’s military campaign in Gaza since October 7 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”.
The office of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu promptly responded to the minister’s remarks, describing them as “disconnected from reality,” adding that Israel was attempting to spare “non-combatants” in Gaza.
Following the backlash over his words, Eliyahu later stated on X, formerly Twitter, that his remarks about the atomic bomb were “metaphorical.”
Israel has never admitted to having a nuclear bomb.