“If there was a button that could be pressed and all the Arabs could disappear – get on an express train to Switzerland, I would push it,” said Deputy Minister of Religious Affairs Matan Kahana (pic.twitter.com/Edt6leIVC0)
An Israeli politician has been sharply criticized for saying on June 14, 2022 that if he could push a button and the Palestinians disappear, he would push it, the Associated Press reported.
Deputy Religious Affairs Minister Matan Kahana told high school students in a Jewish settlement in the West Bank. In a statement recorded on video, he explained that the radically different views of Israelis and Palestinians on the conflict between them were a major obstacle to peace. Therefore, according to him, they have no choice but to live together.
“If there was a button that could be pressed and all the Arabs could disappear – get on an express train to Switzerland, I would push it,” he said in a video that aired on Israeli television. “But what to do, there is no such button.”
“That’s why we seem to be somewhat destined to live together on this earth,” he added.
Kahana is part of the nationalist Yamina (Right) party, which forms the basis of a ruling coalition of eight ideologically different parties. For the first time, a party of Israeli Arabs is coming to power.
In the past year since coming to power, the coalition, which has been plagued by ongoing problems, most notably the withdrawal of members of the ruling majority, has always presented itself as a symbol of Israeli-Arab understanding in a society where Jews and Palestinians often live separately. from each other and rarely come into contact with each other.
The issue of forced evictions is sensitive to Palestinians who were forced to flee their homes during the 1948 Israeli war. During the 1967 Middle East War, a new Palestinian deportation began.
Kahana’s words were condemned by Israeli MPs of Palestinian descent and representatives of the ruling coalition. Opposition MP Ahmad Tibi wrote in a comment on Twitter that he would make Kahana “disappear from the government and the Knesset (Israeli parliament)”. Michal Rosin, a coalition MP from the moderate Meretz (Energy) party, said such statements were “simply inadmissible”.
After the scandal erupted, Kahana wrote on Twitter that parts of his speech “were poorly worded.”
“In it, I explicitly mention that the Jewish and Arab populations will not go anywhere. We, as Jews and Arabs, must strive for peaceful coexistence. Our coalition is a bold step towards this goal,” he said.
