Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich on Sunday denied the existence of the Palestinian people, saying it was "an imaginary invention that is only 100 years old," after statements in which he called for the "erasure" of the town of Huwara in Nablus.
The head of the far-right "Religious Zionism" party said – during his participation in an evening in the French capital, Paris – "There is no such thing as the Palestinian people, it is an imaginary invention that is not more than 100 years old." According to the Israeli newspaper "The Jerusalem Post".
Benjamin Netanyahu's finance minister was invited to Paris for an evening in honour of Jacques Kopfer, a radical Zionist activist and former head of France's Likud party.
The League for Human Rights in France criticized the visit of the right-wing Israeli minister to Paris, stressing last Tuesday that he was "not welcome".
At the end of February, Smotrich called for the erasure of the Palestinian village of Huwwara in the occupied West Bank, after unprecedented attacks by settlers on the town, which resulted in the death of a Palestinian, the injury of dozens of others and the burning and destruction of dozens of homes and cars, after two settlers were killed in gunfire in the area.
The new statements by the extremist minister coincide with the security summit held on Sunday in Sharm el-Sheikh between the Palestinian Authority and the Israeli occupation in the presence of Egypt and Jordan and under the auspices of the United States, which was condemned by the Palestinian resistance factions and called on the Palestinian Authority not to participate in it.
This year witnessed an unprecedented Israeli escalation in the West Bank, which resulted in the death of 89 Palestinians, including 17 children, women and prisoners in Israeli prisons, while 14 Israelis were killed in separate operations.