Netanyahu executive: "Palestine, a fictional nation"

TEL AVIV - The Israeli finance minister of the current executive, Bezalel Smotrich affirmed yesterday in a conference in Paris that "we cannot speak of 'Palestinians' because there is no 'Palestinian people'". According to Smotrich who is also the leader of the nationalist 'Religious Zionism' party, the Palestinian people "is a fiction" devised a century ago to fight against the Zionist movement. Two weeks ago Smotrich had even provoked reproach in Washington for having hoped that an entire village in the West Bank would be "erased". Meanwhile, Palestinian National Authority Prime Minister Mohammad Shtaeyeh today expressed indignation at Smotrich's new statements which, he said, "are conclusive proof of how extremist and racist the ideology of the current Israeli government is".