RIYADH: The Gulf Cooperation Council said on Sunday it had written to Washington’s top diplomat condemning controversial comments from Israel’s finance minister in which he denied the existence of a Palestinian people.
The GCC, in a letter to US Secretary of State Antony Blinken, called on Washington “to assume its responsibilities in responding to all measures and statements that target the Palestinian people”.
The letter from the six-member GCC’s foreign ministers also called on the United States “to play its role in reaching a just, comprehensive and lasting solution” to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
Israel’s far-right Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, speaking earlier this month, said that the Palestinians did not exist as a people, comments that sparked outrage among Arab nations.
The US State Department said they had found Smotrich’s comments “to not only be inaccurate but also deeply concerning and dangerous.”
Smotrich is part of veteran Israeli leader Benjamin Netanyahu’s hard-right government that took office in December.
The GCC, whose foreign ministers met in Riyadh last week.
Violence has intensified in the West Bank in recent months, which Israel has occupied since the Six-Day War of 1967.
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.
Meanwhile, the Palestinian Foreign Ministry accused “Jewish terrorist elements” of an arson attack against a family home in the occupied West Bank on Sunday, but Israeli police said the fire appeared to have been an accident.
NEW TENSIONS
West Bank tensions have been running high as Palestinians mark the holy month of Ramadhan amid a surge of violence, including a gun attack on Saturday in which two Israeli soldiers were wounded and almost nightly arrest raids by the Israeli army.
A Sinjel resident who requested anonymity said that he saw cars whose occupants he recognised as Jewish settlers nearby minutes before the incident.
Most countries deem the settlements, which take up land Palestinians seek for a state, illegal. Over the past year, Israeli forces have made thousands of arrests in the West Bank and killed more than 250 Palestinians, including fighters and civilians.
In overnight West Bank raids, Israeli forces arrested three suspected militants, the army said on Sunday. — Reuters/AFP
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