Arab nations slam Netanyahu remarks on Palestinian state on Saudi land

Saudi Arabia and other Arab countries have condemned remarks by Israel's prime minister who appeared to suggest in an interview that a Palestinian state could be established on Saudi territory.

Benjamin Netanyahu's remarks, which some Israeli media characterized as a joke, came with the region already on edge after U.S. President Donald Trump proposed taking over the territory and displacing Gazans abroad.

Arab League chief Ahmed Aboul Gheit said on Sunday that the thinking behind Netanyahu's remarks "is unacceptable and reflects a complete detachment from reality," adding that such ideas "are nothing more than mere fantasies or illusions."

The Saudi foreign ministry stressed its "categorical rejection to such statements that aim to divert attention from the continuous crimes committed by the Israeli occupation against the Palestinian brothers in Gaza."

A ministry statement welcomed "the condemnation, disapproval and total rejection announced by the brotherly countries towards what Benjamin Netanyahu stated regarding the displacement of the Palestinian people."

In a television interview on Thursday, right-wing Israeli journalist Yaakov Bardugo was discussing with Netanyahu the prospect of diplomatic normalization with Saudi Arabia when he appeared to misspeak, attributing to Riyadh the stance that there would be "no progress without a Saudi state."

"Palestinian state?" Netanyahu corrected him.

"Unless you want the Palestinian state to be in Saudi Arabia," the Israeli premier quipped. "They (the Saudis) have plenty of territory."

Netanyahu went on to describe the talks leading up to the so-called Abraham Accords, in which several Arab countries normalized ties with Israel, concluding: "I think we should allow this process to take its course."

But the suggestion of a state for Palestinians outside the Gaza Strip and the occupied West Bank prompted an outpouring of regional condemnation, including from Qatar, Egypt and the Palestinian foreign ministry, which described the remarks as "racist."

Jordan's foreign ministry condemned them as "inflammatory and a clear violation of international law," stressing that the Palestinians have the "right to establish an independent, sovereign state" alongside Israel.

The foreign ministry of the United Arab Emirates denounced Netanyahu's comments as "reprehensible and provocative" in a statement, calling them "a blatant violation of international law and the United Nations charter."

For Palestinians, any attempt to force them out of Gaza would evoke dark memories of what the Arab world calls the "Nakba" or catastrophe -- the mass displacement of Palestinians during Israel's creation in 1948.

In its statement, Saudi Arabia said "this extremist, occupying mentality does not understand what the Palestinian land means" to Palestinians.

Such a mindset, it added, "does not think that the Palestinian people deserve to live in the first place, as it has completely destroyed the Gaza Strip" and killed tens of thousands "without the slightest human feeling or moral responsibility."