Ex-Israel DM accuses Abbas of seeking to destroy Israel

Israeli Finance Minister Avigdor Lieberman has accused Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas of seeking to delegitimise the State of Israel and destroy it.

Lieberman said Abbas is more dangerous than the Hamas movement because he represents a political threat, not a technical or military threat.

“This man, Abbas, constitutes a political danger to the State of Israel,” Lieberman said, adding that Abbas belongs to the generation of Palestinians who is still committed to eliminating the state of Israel and returning all Palestinian refugees, even if he states otherwise.

“Abbas supports terrorism in the West Bank, rewards saboteurs financially and leads media incitement campaigns against Israel in various international forums, including United Nations institutions, and his latest work culminated in talking about 50 Holocausts carried out by the [Israeli] army against murderous Palestinian saboteurs,” Lieberman said.

Yesterday, Israeli Prime Minister Yair Lapid spoke to German Chancellor Olaf Scholz after Abbas’ statements during a joint conference held in Germany on Wednesday.

READ: Germany’s Scholz phones Israel Premier after Abbas Holocaust comment

During the press conference, Abbas was asked by a reporter if he would apologise to Israel on the 50th anniversary of the 1972 Munich Olympics attack, to which Abbas said it was Israel that had inflicted over 50 “Holocausts” against the Palestinians.

During yesterday’s call, the German chancellor confirmed that he rejects and condemns Abbas’ statements and that he was interested in explaining this personally to the prime minister and in public.

In response to the outcry, Abbas issued a statement calling Nazi Germany’s Holocaust, in which six million Jews were killed, “the most heinous crime in modern human history”.