Key Israeli minister say Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas should also be jailed if Palestinian statehood advances.
Israel’s National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir says Palestinian Authority (PA) officials should be assassinated if progress is made on the recognition of Palestinian statehood as a result of a pending United Nations vote.
Speaking at an Otzma Yehudit party meeting on Monday, Ben-Gvir called top PA officials “terrorists”, multiple Israeli media outlets reported.
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“If they accelerate the recognition of the Palestinian terrorist state, and the UN recognises a Palestinian state, targeted assassinations of senior Palestinian Authority officials, who are terrorists for all intents and purposes, should be ordered,” Ben-Gvir said, according to the Jerusalem Post newspaper.
The UN Security Council is scheduled later on Monday to vote on a resolution endorsing the Gaza ceasefire plan presented by the administration of United States President Donald Trump, which will back the formation of an international stabilisation force.
The proposal suggests that the UN would support a “credible pathway to Palestinian self-determination and statehood”.
Ben-Gvir said Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas should be arrested if the UN vote takes the idea of Palestinian statehood forward, adding that a solitary confinement cell is “ready for him” at Ketziot prison.
The PA recognises Israel and oversees security coordination with Israeli forces in the occupied West Bank. But Israeli leaders have drawn a red line against establishing a Palestinian state led by the PA.
Israel has been pushing to change the wording in the UN’s Gaza proposal to avoid any mention of Palestinian statehood. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has also reassured his far-right coalition partners that his opposition to a Palestinian state remains unchanged.
Ben-Gvir went even further on Saturday, falsely claiming that the Palestinian people do not exist.
The national security minister said “there is no such thing as a Palestinian people” and called Palestinians a “collection of immigrants from Arab countries to the land of Israel” who have “sown terror, murder and atrocities everywhere”.
He reiterated his support for the so-called “voluntary migration” of Palestinians out of their lands, which critics say underscores Israeli plans for ethnically cleansing Palestinians.
Israeli authorities, from Ben-Gvir and the far-right parties forming Netanyahu’s coalition to the more moderate opposition figures, are all united in their unyielding objection to the establishment of a sovereign Palestinian state.
Bezalel Smotrich, Netanyahu’s finance minister who acts as a de facto governor of the occupied West Bank, has been pushing for the annexation of the Palestinian territory as another response to the growing international support for Palestinian statehood.
Israeli officials have also repeatedly stressed that they will not allow the PA to become the governing force in Gaza.
But the US proposal on Gaza envisages a role for the PA, provided it engages in substantial “reforms”.
Per the plan put forward by Washington, Gaza’s governance is to be handled by an international “board of peace” with a technocratic Palestinian administration on the ground along with the stabilisation force.
But Hamas and other armed groups in Gaza have criticised the draft resolution at the UN, warning it would pave the way for foreign control over Palestinian decision-making and handing over governance and reconstruction to a supranational body.
The factions insisted on Monday that humanitarian aid should be managed by Palestinian institutions under UN supervision. They also rejected disarming Gaza or curbing the right to resist, and called for international mechanisms to hold Israel accountable for rights abuses.
