• Bezalel Smotrich’s assertion that Palestinians don’t exist was denounced as “inflammatory”.
• Smotrich joined the cabinet of Israel’s right-wing Benjamin Netanyahu last year .
• He has a history of making derogatory remarks against Palestinians.

The far-right Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich‘s assertion that Palestinians don’t exist was denounced as “inflammatory” by Palestinian Prime Minister Mohammad Shtayyeh on Monday.

“There are no Palestinians, because there are no Palestinian people,” Smotrich said Sunday, quoting French-Israeli Zionist activist Jacques Kupfer, speaking at an event in Paris according to a video circulating on social media.

“After 2,000 years of exile, the prophecies of Jeremiah, Ezekiel and Isaiah are beginning to come true and God is gathering his people, the people of Israel are returning home”, Smotrich said.

“There are Arabs around who don’t like it, so what do they do? They invent a fictitious people and claim fictitious rights to the land of Israel, only to fight the Zionist movement”, he added.

Smotrich joined the cabinet of Israel’s seasoned leader Benjamin Netanyahu last year, which analysts have dubbed the most right-wing administration in the nation’s history.

“It is the historical truth, it is the biblical truth… the Arabs in Israel must hear it, as well as certain Jews who are confused in Israel, this truth must be heard here at the Elysee Palace (in Paris), and at the White House in Washington, and everyone must hear this truth,” Smotrich continued.

Shtayyeh, speaking before a cabinet meeting of the Palestinian Authority on Monday, said the “inflammatory statements are consistent with the first Zionist sayings of ‘a land without a people for a people without a land'”.

He said the comments were “conclusive evidence of the extremist, racist Zionist ideology… of the current Israeli government.”

Smotrich and his Religious Zionism organisation have a history of making derogatory remarks against Palestinians.

After two Israelis were killed by an alleged Hamas militant in February, Smotrich demanded that the Palestinian town of Huwara in the occupied West Bank be “wiped out.”

Hundreds of Israeli settlers later set fire to Palestinian homes and vehicles in the West Bank town.

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