Gulf States urge US over Israeli minister’s remarks on Palestinians
The Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) sent a letter to US Secretary of State Antony Blinken denouncing remarks made by Israel’s finance minister denying the existence of a Palestinian people. The GCC urged the US to respond to such statements targeting the Palestinian people.
The GCC’s foreign ministers, in a letter to US Secretary of State Antony Blinken, urged the US to address statements that target the Palestinian people and play a role in finding a just and lasting solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. This comes after Israel’s finance minister, Bezalel Smotrich, made controversial comments denying the existence of a Palestinian people, which received condemnation from Arab nations.
The comments made by Smotrich were deemed “inaccurate, deeply concerning, and dangerous” by the US State Department. Smotrich is a member of the hard-right government of veteran Israeli leader Benjamin Netanyahu, which came into power in December.
The GCC ministers also criticized previous comments made by Smotrich, in which he called for the destruction of the Palestinian town of Huwara in the West Bank following an attack that left two Israelis dead in February, a statement he later retracted.
The GCC, whose foreign ministers met in Riyadh last week, includes the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain, which normalised relations with Israel under the US-crafted 2020 Abraham Accords, as well as Saudi Arabia, which has not.
On Tuesday, the State Department criticised a move by Israel’s parliament to annul part of a law banning Israelis from living in areas of the West Bank evacuated in 2005, calling it “provocative” and in direct contradiction of promises made to Washington at the time.
Blinken, appearing before a Senate committee, also reiterated previous US pushback on Smotrich’s comments about Palestinians, saying they do not reflect US values.