Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich said he is "working on returning to the evacuated settlements in northern Samaria, Ganim and Kadim." He stated this in an interview with the Sabbath bulletin "Ofek," adding: "I hope this will happen in the coming weeks as part of correcting the sin of the disengagement. The people of Israel are correcting the sin in Gaza and I hope we will also succeed in completing the correction of the sin in northern Samaria." Finally, he said that "what we are privileged to do in this term is simply to erase the Palestinian state - later, with God's help, officially, but first in practice, we are simply taking this idea off the table as part of the lessons of October 7th, and establishing facts on the ground."