Far-right lawmaker Bezalel Smotrich on Monday called to ban Israel's Arab parties.
Speaking at Reichmann University's World Summit on Counter-Terrorism, the Religious Zionist Party chief called the country's Arab parties "the most dangerous security threat to Israel today."
"They are the first to lead the hostile discourse against Israel and against its right to exist," he said, adding that the widespread massacre of Jewish citizens by their Arab compatriots was “a more realistic scenario than ever.”
Smotrich painted a picture of “hundreds of thousands of illegal weapons being directed at the moment of truth against Israeli citizens.”
The firebrand legislator also rejected outright attempts by Arab lawmakers to break into the political mainstream — like the Islamist Ra'am party which is currently a member of the governing coalition — as a facade meant to cover radical anti-Israeli beliefs.
“The concealment efforts led by [Ra'am leader] Mansour Abbas in the old and well-known method of the Islamic Movement to camouflage radical, extremist Islamist nationalism, which seeks to destroy the State of Israel and replace it with one big Islamic caliphate,” he claimed.
The former transportation minister's statements spurred backlash from members of the Arab-majority Joint List party, with lawmaker Aida Touma-Sliman labeling him a “racist Jewish supremacist.”
Ahmad Tibi, head of the Joint List's Ta'al faction, said the statements painted a "dystopian scenario" for Israel. He also noted that should Smotrich become a minister again, along with fellow far-right lawmaker Itamar Ben-Gvir, Arab citizens would lose political representation.
Ben-Gvir has also advocated for extremist policies targeting Arabs, calling to deport citizens who he deemed "disloyal to Israel."