Palestinian Authority Prime Minister Mohammad Shtayyeh said Monday that remarks from a senior Israeli minister denying the existence of a Palestinian people is evidence of what he called the “racist ideology” governing Israel.

Far-right Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich had said that the Palestinian people were “an invention” from the last century and that people like himself and his grandparents were the “real Palestinians.”

Shtayyeh, responding at the start of a government meeting in Ramallah, said Smotrich’s “inflammatory” remarks demonstrate the “extremist, racist, Zionist ideology that governs the current Israeli government,” according to the PA’s official Wafa news agency.

Shtayyeh further claimed that antiquities and history prove the tie between the Palestinian people and the land “since the dawn of human history,” the report said.

The Palestinian people “are not shaken by the statements of the falsifiers of history and their false claims,” he declared.

by email and never miss our top stories

“We are the ones who gave Palestine its name and the land, its value and status,” Shtayyeh said. “This land is ours, and Israel is a colonial state established by the colonialists and settlers.”

Speaking in Paris at a private memorial service for prominent Likud activist and Jewish Agency board member Jacques Kupfer, Smotrich said Sunday there was “no such thing as Palestinians because there’s no such thing as the Palestinian people,” a comment that was met with applause and...

Read Full Story: https://news.google.com/rss/articles/CBMiaGh0dHBzOi8vd3d3LnRpbWVzb2Zpc3JhZWwu...