RAMALLAH: Mohammad Shtayyeh, Palestinian prime minister, on Monday lambasted far-right Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich over his “inflammatory” remarks that Palestinians do not exist.
Quoting French-Israeli Zionist activist Jacques Kupfe, Smotrich said on Sunday that there are no Palestinians because there are no Palestinian people.
His remarks came in a viral video made during an event in Paris.
Minister on historical prophecies
Smotrich said that after 2,000 years of exile, the prophecies of Jeremiah, Isaiah, and Ezekiel were starting to come true and God was gathering his people, and the people of Israel were coming back home.
He added that there are Arabs around who do not like it, so what do they do? They invent fictitious persons and claim fictitious rights to the Israeli land, only to fight the Zionist movement.
Smotrich became a minister in the cabinet of veteran leader Benjamin Netanyahu last year, which analysts have declared the most right-wing government in the country’s history.
Speaking ahead of a cabinet meeting of the Palestinian Authority on Monday, Shtayyeh said the inflammatory statement is conclusive evidence of the racist, extremist Zionist ideology of the current Israeli government.
