Berliner Tageblatt - UN rights chief slams Israeli minister's 'unfathomable' comments

Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich made his comments on Wednesday, days after two settlers were shot dead in the northern West Bank town of Huwara, killings, that led to Israeli settlers to attack the town.

"I think the village of Huwara needs to be wiped out," Smotrich said. "I think the State of Israel should do it."

Later, he tweeted that he "didn't mean to erase the village of Huwara, but only to act in a targeted way against the terrorists".

But UN rights chief Volker Turk, speaking before the United Nations Human Rights Council in Geneva, denounced Smotrich's original comments as "an unfathomable statement of incitement to violence and hostility".

Washington, a staunch ally of Israel, was even blunter in its response to Smotrich's comments.

"They were irresponsible, they were repugnant, they were disgusting," US State Department spokesman Ned Price told reporters.

"Just as we condemn Palestinian incitement to violence, we condemn these provocative remarks that also amount to incitement to violence," he added.

- Appeal for calm -

Smotrich, an extreme-right settler who lives near Nablus, spoke during a surge in violence in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and specifically in the West Bank, which Israel has occupied since the Six-Day War of 1967.

The attack on Huwara late Sunday saw hundreds of settlers set homes and cars ablaze and hurl stones in Huwara overnight, while a Palestinian man was killed in the nearby village of Zaatara.

More than 350 Palestinians were injured, most suffering from tear gas inhalation, the Palestinian Red Crescent Society said.

On Monday, gunmen shot dead an Israeli-American motorist, and on Wednesday, Israeli forces searching for suspects in the Aqabat Jabr refugee camp near Jericho killed a Palestinian man.

Turk, in his address to the council Friday, was presenting his office's latest report on the situation in the occupied Palestinian territory.

"Increasing violence is condemning innocent people on all sides to further tragedy, in a terrible, self-sustaining logic, or rather, illogic, of confrontation," he said.

He called on "decision-makers and people on all sides... to step back from the precipice to which increasing extremism and violence have led".

M.Furrer--BTB