Israeli minister tells Saudis to 'ride camels' if they demand Palestinian state
Israel's far-right Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich said Thursday that Saudi Arabia should "keep riding camels" if it asks for a Palestinian state in exchange for normalizing ties with Israel.
"If Saudi Arabia tells us normalization in exchange for a Palestinian state, friends, no thank you", Smotrich said at a conference in Israel.
"Keep riding camels on the sand in the Saudi desert; we'll keep truly developing -- with an economy, a society, a state and all the great and wonderful things we know how to do", Smotrich said, prompting sharp responses in Israel.
Opposition leader Yair Lapid swiftly denounced the comments.
"To our friends in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and the Middle East, Smotrich does not represent the State of Israel", Lapid posted on X in Arabic, later calling for him to apologize.
Former defense minister Benny Gantz, another opposition figure, said that Smotrich's comments "indicate ignorance, and a lack of internalization of his responsibility as a senior minister in the government and cabinet".
Smotrich, known for his hardline nationalist views and frequent inflammatory statements, often clashes with other members of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's coalition government.
"The entity called the State of Israel is the State of Israel within all its borders, and it will never establish a Palestinian state," he said.
The United Arab Emirates, Bahrain and Morocco normalized relations with Israel in 2020 under the US-brokered Abraham Accords.
But Saudi Arabia's own normalization talks with Israel were frozen after Hamas's October 2023 attack sparked the Gaza war.
Smotrich, who lives in a settlement in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, has also repeatedly called for the Palestinian territory's formal annexation and for continuing the war in Gaza until Hamas is completely destroyed.
Source: Agence France Presse
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