Israel’s finance minister, Bezalel Smotrich, has raised some hackles by denying the Palestinians’ existence. “There is no such thing as Palestinians, because there is no such thing as a Palestinian people,” the Zionist hardliner stated Sunday night at a Paris event.
“There is no Palestinian history, no Palestinian language,” the Religious Zionist Party leader asserted at a private memorial service for the French-Israeli Zionist activist Jacques Kupfer. Kupfer, who died of cancer two years ago, had been steadfast in his refusal to recognize the existence of a Palestinian nation, while advocating for the Israeli-occupied West Bank to be annexed.
The existence of a Palestinian people, Smotrich continued, had been “invented by some Arabs in the region over the past century, to fight the Zionist movement.” That “historical truth,” he stressed, needs to be heard around the world, including in the White House in Washington.
Perhaps more provocative was the fact that the lectern from which the finance minister spoke showed a map of Israel, comprising the West Bank, Gaza, and Jordan.
Palestinian Prime Minister Mohammad Shtayyeh said ahead of a cabinet meeting on Monday that the “inflammatory” statements made by Smotrich were evidence of the “extremist, racist, Zionist ideology that governs the current Israeli government.”
Shtayyeh further claimed that antiquities and history prove the tie between the Palestinian people and the land “since the dawn of human history,” and that the Palestinian people “are not shaken by the statements of the falsifiers of history and their false claims.”
Controversy is no stranger to Smotrich. In late February, two Israeli settlers were murdered near the Palestinian village of Huwara, after which a group of four hundred settlers set fire to dozens of houses and cars in that village.
A few days later, Smotrich called for Israel to “wipe out” that town, home to 7,000. Later, he said his words had been “distorted.”
This time, Smotrich’s comments were particularly ill-timed, as that very day, in the Egyptian resort of Sharm-el-Sheikh, Israeli and Palestinian officials (representing the West Bank-based Palestine Authority, not recognised by Hamas, which governs the Gaza Strip) had pledged to curb and prevent violence between their peoples—their second meeting toward that goal in a month.
Jordan and Egypt, which mediated these talks with U.S. backing, were quick to condemn Smotrich’s remarks in the strongest of terms.
Jordan’s Foreign Ministry said that Smotrich’s performance was a “reckless inflammatory act and a violation of international norms and the peace treaty” between the two countries. Soon after, Israel’s ambassador was summoned for a visit. On Monday evening, Israel’s Foreign Ministry released a statement that affirmed it still recognised Jordan’s territorial integrity.
On Tuesday, an official source told Reuters that Amman, the capital of Jordan, had received additional assurances from Israel that Smotrich’s statements did not represent Israel’s position.
Ahmed Abu Zaid, a spokesman for the Egyptian Foreign Ministry, said the Israeli minister’s remarks “deny the facts of history and geography (and) undermine the efforts aimed at achieving calm between the Palestinian and Israeli sides.”
At their latest meeting in Sharm-el-Sheikh, Palestinian and Israeli officials had agreed “to establish a mechanism [which they did not precise] to curb and counter violence, incitement and inflammatory statements and actions,” and would meet again in Sharm el-Sheikh in April.
They also reiterated promises made on February 26th in the Jordanian port city of Aqaba, which included an Israeli pledge to stop discussing new settlements in the West Bank, the Palestinians’ territory, for the next four months.
It remains to be seen whether such efforts will prove fruitful. Violence in the West Bank, as evinced by the Huwara episode, did not abate after their talks in February.
Indeed, during their talks on Sunday, there was another shooting in Huwara, wounding one. In recent months, the number of incursions in the West Bank by the Israeli army has increased, as have acts of violence committed by both Jewish settlers and Palestinians.
A show of haste by both parties in reaching an agreement was therefore of the essence, especially since historically, the month-long Muslim holiday of Ramadan, which starts March 23rd, is known to trigger unrest in the region—a reality perhaps exacerbated by the fact that, this year, Ramadan coincides with Judaism’s Passover and Christian Easter.
Compounding matters even more is Israel’s Parliament’s unexpected March 21st decision to allow Jewish settlers to return to four settlements in the occupied West Bank—a move which, by amending a 2005 law that had ordered their evacuation, could very well unleash a new round of violence.
“Coming at a time of heightened tensions, the legislative changes announced today are particularly provocative and counterproductive to efforts to restore some measure of calm as we head into Ramadan, Passover, and the Easter holidays,” deputy State Department spokesman Vedant Patel told reporters.
