In a statement on Friday, Hamas said that Ben Gvir’s recent racist remarks about the Palestinians’ freedom of movement in the West Bank and Smotrich’s previous remarks about wiping out the West Bank town of Huwara reflect that there is an ongoing ethnic cleansing campaign targeting the Palestinian people.

“The Palestinian people have been exposed to an ethnic cleansing campaign since the Palestinian Nakba in 1948 at the hands of Zionist gangs and settlers who are supported by the occupation authorities,” Hamas underlined.

Hamas expressed its belief that the zionist occupation’s attempts to uproot the Palestinian people from their land would be doomed to failure, adding that its settlement projects would fail to confer legitimacy on the illegal presence of Jewish settlers on the Palestinian land or give them security.

The Movement urged the international community to denounce such israeli remarks and translate its condemnations into practical measures that hold zionist leaders and settlers accountable for their crimes against the Palestinian people and their violation of the international law.

In a recent interview with Channel 12 News, Itamar Ben-Gvir said “my right, the right of my wife and my children to move around [the West Bank] is more important than freedom of movement for the Arabs. The right to life comes before freedom of movement.” (ILKHA)