UN chief calls Netanyahu's 'ethnic cleansing' video 'outrageous'

UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon today lambasted Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s “ethnic cleansing” video as an “unacceptable and outrageous” portrayal of people who oppose Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank.

Ban told the United Nations Security Council: “Let me be absolutely clear: settlements are illegal under international law. The occupation, stifling and oppressive, must end.” He said Netanyahu’s statement was disturbing.

In a video message posted on Facebook last Friday, Netanyahu said the Palestinians wanted to form a state devoid of a Jewish population and called it “ethnic cleansing”.

The Palestinians hope to establish an independent state in the occupied West Bank along with the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip and East Jerusalem as its capital. Israel captured the West Bank in the 1967 Arab-Israeli war.

Last Friday after viewing the video, US State Department spokeswoman Elizabeth Trudeau called the Israeli leader’s words “inappropriate and unhelpful”.

“We obviously strongly disagree with the characterisation that those who oppose settlement activity or view it as an obstacle to peace are somehow calling for ethnic cleansing of Jews from the West Bank. We believe that using that type of terminology is inappropriate and unhelpful,” she said.