‘Sorry Mohammad’: Ben-Gvir says Jewish lives precede those of Arabs

Far-right Israeli security minister Itamar Ben-Gvir says his and his family’s rights to safe movement in the occupied West Bank are more important than those of Arabs, downplaying the deadly string of murders in Arab communities.

“My right, and my wife’s and my children’s right, to get around on the roads in Judea and Samaria is more important than the right to movement for Arabs,” he said during an interview with Israel's Channel 12 news on Wednesday evening, referring to the West Bank by its biblical name.

He also said that the spiraling crime wave in Arab communities poses a security threat to Israel only because it could spill over into Jewish communities, which he called “a bigger threat” than Arabs being killed.

Ben-Gvir, who is the head of the coalition’s far-right Otzma Yehudit party, resides in the West Bank settlement of Kiryat Arba, on the outskirts of the city of al-Khalil in the southern West Bank. The city is controlled by the Palestinian Authority and Israel in an 80%-20% split.

"Sorry Mohammad," he provocatively told the Arab journalist and interviewer of Channel 12 Mohammad Magadli, "but that’s the reality. That’s the truth. My right to life comes before their right to movement."

The development came after a wave of recent resistance operations in the occupied West Bank against the decades-long occupation by the Zionist regime that prompted the Israeli minister to say that the regime faces "an existential threat."

Remarks by Ben-Gvir, who has a history of anti-Arab incitement and has long taken a hardline approach to the Palestinians, infuriated some legislators in the Israeli parliament (Keenest).

Arab lawmaker Ahmad Tibi of the Hadash-Ta’al party strongly denounced Ben-Gvir, who oversees the police, for his provocative comments.

"For the first time, an Israeli minister admits on air that Israel enforces an apartheid regime based on Jewish supremacy," Tibi said on X.

Karine Elharrar, a lawmaker from the opposition Yesh Atid party and former minister of infrastructure, energy and water resources, also reacted to Ben-Gvir's provocative remarks, blasting him as "the authentic representative of the most racist” cabinet "we’ve ever had."  

Israeli forces launch raids on various cities of the West Bank almost on a daily basis under the pretext of detaining what the regime calls “wanted” Palestinians. The raids usually lead to violent confrontations with residents.

More than 200 Palestinians have been killed this year in the occupied Palestinian territories and Gaza. The majority of these fatalities have been recorded in the West Bank. At least 30 people have been killed in Palestinian retaliatory attacks against Israeli settlers during that time. 

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