Itamar Ben-Gvir called for Israel to return to Gush Katif, the bloc of Gaza Jewish communities evicted in 2005, as a response to the continued rocket fire on Israel's South.
The outspoken lawyer and candidate with the Otzma Yehudit Party, comprised of followers of the late Rabbi Meir Kahane, is running as part of the Union of Right-Wing Parties in the Knesset elections on April 9.
"We have to bomb from the air and return to Gush Katif," he stated on Twitter, during the escalation between the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip and Israel which resulted in the destruction of a family's home near Kfar Saba.
"Hamas needs to receive constant fire, and the Sharon region [where Kfar Saba is located] is the same as any other place in the State of Israel," Ben-Gvir stated. He called for "a more significant response than the bombing of empty buildings" and recommended returning to targeted killings of terrorist leaders.
Gaza was a territory of Israel from 1967 until the 2005 Disengagement, a unilateral move by the Israeli government, which removed all Israeli settlements, seen as obstacles to peace, and IDF forces from Gaza. The Palestinian population centers in Gaza had been under Palestinian Authority jurisdiction since the Oslo Accords of the mid 1990s. A year after the Disengagement, Hamas usurped control from the Palestinian Authority. Since then, three major conflicts have occurred between Hamas and Israel: Operation Cast Lead in 2008–09, Operation Pillar of Defense in 2012 and Operation Protective Edge in 2014.