Palestinian Prime Minister Mohammad Shtayyeh on Monday said it was “inflammatory” comments made by Israel’s far-right Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich that Palestine does not exist.
“There are no Palestinians, because there are no Palestinians,” Smotrich said Sunday, quoting French-Israeli Zionist activist Jacques Kupfer, speaking at an event in Paris according to a video circulated on social media.
“After 2,000 years of exile, the prophecies of Jeremiah, Ezekiel and Isaiah began to come true and God gathered his people, the Israelites returned home”, said Smotrich.
“There are Arabs around here who are not happy, so what? They created fictitious people and claimed fictitious rights in the land of Israel, just to fight the Zionist movement”, he added.
Smotrich last year served as a minister in veteran Israeli leader Benjamin Netanyahu’s cabinet, which analysts call the most far-right government in the country’s history.
“It is a historical truth, it is a biblical truth … the Arabs in Israel must hear, as well as certain confused Jews in Israel, this truth must be heard here in the Elysee Palace (in Paris), and in the White House in Washington, and everyone must listen to this truth,” continued Smotrich.
Shtayyeh, speaking before the cabinet meeting of the Palestinian Authority on Saturday, said in “inflammatory statements consistent with the first Zionist saying ‘land without people for people without land'”.
He said the comments were “conclusive proof of the extremist, racist Zionist ideology … of the current Israeli government.”
Smotrich and the Religious Zionist group have a history of making incendiary comments about Palestine.
In February, Smotrich called for the Palestinian town of Huwara in the occupied West Bank to be “liquidated” after two Israelis were shot dead by suspected Hamas militants.
Hundreds of Israeli settlers attacked and set fire to Palestinian homes and cars in the West Bank city.