Bin Juffair attacks model Bella Hadid because of Palestinian rights | News of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict

Hadid criticized the far-right minister’s remarks, who said that Israeli rights trump Palestinian freedom of movement.

Israel’s far-right national security minister sparred with US model Bella Hadid over comments made this week that Palestinians condemned as racist.

In an interview with N12 News on Wednesday, Itamar Ben Jvir said settlers’ right to life and movement in illegal settlements in the occupied West Bank outweighs the Palestinians’ right to movement.

Palestinians have long protested travel restrictions, including checkpoints, imposed on them by Israel in the occupied West Bank, an area where they exercise limited self-rule.

Ben Gvir, who lives in the Jewish settlement of Kiryat Arba near the West Bank city of Hebron, said in the interview that the restrictions were necessary to protect his family’s security.

He said, “My right, my wife’s right, and my children’s right to travel on the roads of Judea and Samaria are more important than the Arabs’ right to movement,” referring to the West Bank by its biblical Hebrew name.

Model Bella Hadid, whose father is Palestinian and a staunch supporter of Palestinian rights, criticized Ben Juffair’s comment on Instagram, where she has nearly 60 million followers.

“Anywhere, anytime, and especially in 2023, someone’s life should be worth more than someone else’s. Especially because of their race, culture, or pure hate,” she wrote in a post on Thursday.

It also published a video from the leading Israeli human rights group B’Tselem showing Israeli soldiers in Hebron telling a resident that Palestinians are not allowed to walk on a certain street because it is for Jews. “Does this remind anyone of anything?” I wrote.

Ben Jvir responded in a statement on Friday, calling Hadid an “Israel hater” and saying she only shared part of the interview on her social media account in order to portray him as a racist.

On Thursday, the Palestinian Foreign Ministry denounced Ben Jvir’s remarks as “racist and heinous” and said they “only confirm Israel’s apartheid system based on Jewish superiority”.

The international community, along with the Palestinians, considers settlement construction illegal. More than 700,000 Israelis live in the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem, territories captured by Israel in 1967 and claimed by Palestinian leaders for their future state.

Palestinians in Hebron, where Jewish settlements consume a large proportion of the city center, are particularly vulnerable to state-sponsored settler violence, as well as Israeli surveillance.

Settler attacks against Palestinians and their property also occur regularly.

Israel has rejected any suggestions that it maintains an apartheid regime against the Palestinians, despite reports by leading human rights organizations – including Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International – to the contrary.

The West Bank has been witnessing acts of violence since early last year, especially with the repeated bloody raids launched by the army.

According to the United Nations, more than 200 Palestinians have been killed this year, the highest number of deaths since 2005.

Ben Jvir, a member of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s far-right coalition, has been convicted in the past of inciting racism and supporting a terrorist organization.