KUWAIT/RIYADH: Kuwait, Saudi Arabia and other Arab countries condemned on Sunday remarks by the Zionist entity’s prime minister who appeared to suggest in an interview that a Palestinian state could be established on Saudi territory. Benjamin Netanyahu’s remarks came with the region already on edge after US President Donald Trump proposed taking over the territory and displacing Gazans abroad.

Kuwait’s ministry of foreign affairs strongly condemned and rejected Netanyahu’s statements against Saudi Arabia, expressing support for the kingdom in safeguarding its stability and sovereignty. In a statement issued on Sunday, the ministry also reiterated its rejection of any attempts to displace the Palestinian people. It commended Saudi Arabia and other nations for their efforts in securing the legitimate rights of the Palestinian people, including the establishment of an independent state along the June 4, 1967 borders, with East Jerusalem as its capital.

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 (Zionist) 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, rightwing Zionist 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 Zionist premier said. “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 the Zionist entity, 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 the Zionist entity.

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 the Nakba or catastrophe — the mass displacement of Palestinians during the Zionist entity’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”.

Egypt will host a summit of Arab nations on Feb 27 to discuss “the latest serious developments” concerning the Palestinian territories, its foreign ministry said Sunday. Egyptian Foreign Minister Badr Abdelatty was heading to Washington for talks on Sunday, while Jordan’s King Abdullah II was due to meet Trump at the White House on Feb 11. – Agencies