The Palestinian Authority and several Arab countries on Monday strongly denounced the remarks of a far-right Israeli minister who denied the existence of the Palestinians as individuals and as a people.

“There are no Palestinians because there are no Palestinian people,” Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich said on Sunday evening during a private visit to Paris, according to a video widely shared on social media. .

“This kind of comment does not help at all,” said Farhan Haq, spokesman for UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres. The UN “will continue to support the rights of the Palestinian people and push for a two-state solution, Israeli and Palestinian, living side by side in peace and security,” he added.

On a private visit to Paris, Mr. Smotrich made the statements on the same day of talks in Egypt in an attempt to ease tensions as Ramadan approaches and as the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is sucked into a new spiral of violence that has has already caused more than a hundred deaths since the beginning of the year.

“After 2,000 years of exile, the prophecies (of the Bible) are beginning to come true and … the people of Israel are returning home,” Smotrich said.

“There are Arabs around who don’t like it, so what are they doing? They are making up a fictitious people and claiming fictitious rights to the land of Israel,” he added.

These “incendiary remarks” according to which “there is no Palestinian people and that this one is an invention (…) is irrefutable proof of the racism of the extreme Zionist ideology” of the Israeli government led by Benjamin Netanyahu said Palestinian Prime Minister Mohammad Shtayyeh.

But for Mr. Smotrich, “it is the historical truth, it is the biblical truth (…) and this truth, the Arabs in Israel must hear it (and it) must be heard here at the palace of the Elysée Palace and the White House in Washington”.

These words bear witness to Israel’s “racist and fascist policy”, declared the Islamist movement Hamas, calling on the international community, including France, to take a “firm position against the Israeli occupation” of the Palestinian Territories.

Mr. Smotrich made his remarks behind a lectern with a map showing Israel including the territories it has occupied since 1967 and neighboring Jordan.

Condemning remarks of “extreme racism”, the Jordanian Foreign Ministry warned that “the use of (such) a map” could be a violation of the 1994 Israeli-Jordanian peace treaty.

The Israeli ambassador to Jordan was then summoned by the authorities who gave him a “strong protest letter” that he must send to his government, the Jordanian ministry said in the evening.

The Israeli Foreign Ministry affirmed Israel’s “commitment to the peace agreement” with Amman, assuring that “the position of the State of Israel, which recognizes the territorial integrity of the Hashemite Kingdom, does not (had) not changed.”

Cairo called Mr Smotrich’s remarks “racist”, “inflammatory and unacceptable”.

Sunday’s discussions in Egypt produced a statement similar to that of a similar meeting held in Jordan on February 26 and signaling a commitment by Israel and the Palestinian Authority to “de-escalation”. , which had hardly been followed up on at the time.

Even as the meeting was taking place in Jordan, two young Israeli settlers were shot dead in their car in Huwara, a Palestinian town in the northern occupied West Bank. In retaliation, settlers attacked Huwara, burning dozens of buildings and cars.

“I think Huwara should be destroyed,” said Mr. Smotrich, before retracting the international outcry caused by this statement.

Another far-right figure in the Netanyahu government, Itamar Ben Gvir, Minister of National Security, announced the closure, in annexed East Jerusalem, of a production office working for the Palestinian Public Radio-Television. , claiming that this company was not regularly registered with the Israeli authorities and accusing it of “incitement to hatred”.

Asked by AFP, Ahmad Assaf, head of Palestinian public broadcasting, recalled that the Palestine TV office in East Jerusalem had been closed by Israel in 2018 and condemned Mr. Ben Gvir’s decision as a “crime against the journalism”.

At the same time, Israel announced measures aimed at easing restrictions on Palestinians that are supposed to allow them to come in greater numbers to come to pray at the esplanade of the Mosques in Jerusalem – Islam’s third holiest site – during Ramadan. , which is due to start on Wednesday or Thursday.

20/03/2023 21:08:11 – Ramallah (Palestinian Territories) (AFP) – © 2023 AFP