The Palestinian Authority, Egypt and Jordan on Monday condemned as “racist” an Israeli minister’s remarks denying the existence of the Palestinian people, with Amman summoning Israel’s ambassador for a rebuke.
Israeli Minister of Finance Bezalel Smotrich is part of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s hard-right government that took office in December.
Smotrich had already faced international rebuke early this month after calling for a Palestinian town in the occupied West Bank to be “wiped out,” amid spiraling violence in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
Photo: Reuters
“There are no Palestinians, because there isn’t a Palestinian people,” he said on Sunday in Paris, quoting French-Israeli Zionist campaigner Jacques Kupfer at an event in his memory, according to a video circulating on social media.
Palestinian Prime Minister Mohammad Shtayyeh said, ahead of a Cabinet meeting on Monday, the “inflammatory statements” made by Smotrich provided “conclusive evidence of the extremist, racist Zionist ideology ... of the current Israeli government.”
Evoking biblical “prophecies” that are “beginning to come true,” Smotrich said: “After 2,000 years ... God is gathering his people. The people of Israel are returning home.”
“There are Arabs around who don’t like it, so what do they do? They invent a fictitious people and claim fictitious rights to the Land of Israel, only to fight the Zionist movement,” he said.
“It is the historical truth, it is the biblical truth,” he said.
Farhan Haq, deputy spokesman for UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, said the minister’s remarks were “completely unhelpful,” adding that Palestinian people “obviously” exist.
“We continue to support their rights and to push for a two-state solution,” Haq said.
The minister, who met no French government officials during his trip, was speaking from a lectern that featured a map of so-called Greater Israel, including the West Bank, annexed Golan Heights, blockaded Gaza Strip and Jordan, which signed a peace treaty with Israel in 1994.
Israel has occupied the West Bank since the Six-Day War of 1967, when it also seized east Jerusalem, the Gaza Strip and the Golan Heights.
Smotrich’s comments came as Israeli and Palestinian representatives met in the Red Sea resort of Sharm el-Sheikh along with Egyptian, Jordanian and US officials for “extensive discussions on ways to de-escalate tensions,” according to a joint statement.
The Jordanian Ministry of Foreign Affairs called the remarks “extremist racism” and warned his “use of a map ... that encompasses the border of the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan” might be in violation of the 1994 peace accord.
The Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs posted on Twitter shortly afterwards: “Israel is committed to the 1994 peace agreement with Jordan” and “recognizes the territorial integrity of the Hashemite Kingdom,” but did not mention the content of the speech.
In a following statement, the Jordanian ministry said it had summoned the Israeli ambassador to receive a “strongly worded letter of protest to convey to his government.”
Egypt, which in 1979 became the first Arab country to recognize and sign a peace treaty with Israel, condemned the “inflammatory and unacceptable” as well as “racist” remarks, Cairo’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs said in a statement.
In related news, the Israeli parliament yesterday repealed legislation that ordered the evacuation of four settlements in the occupied West Bank, one of the first major moves by Netanyahu’s hard-right coalition.
The original law, passed in 2005, mandated the evacuation of four Jewish settlements in the northern West Bank, along with Israel’s disengagement from the Gaza Strip. The repeal would allow Jewish residents to return to these settlements on condition of approval by the Israeli military.
Since the 1967 war, Israel has established about 140 settlements on land Palestinians see as the core of a future state. Besides the authorized settlements, groups of settlers have built scores of outposts without government permission.
Most world powers deem settlements built in the territory Israel seized in the 1967 war as illegal under international law and their expansion as an obstacle to peace, since they eat away at land the Palestinians claim for a future state.
Yuli Edelstein, head of the Israeli parliament’s Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee, hailed the move as “the first and significant step towards real repair and the establishment of Israel in the territories of the homeland that belongs to it.”
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