Yamina Deputy Minister: ‘If I Could Press A Button To Make Arabs Disappear, I Would’

JERUSALEM (VINnews) — Matan Kahana, a senior member of the Bennett-Lapid coalition, drew fire Tuesday after a recording surfaced of him saying he would deport all Arabs from the Holy Land if there were a magical button that could do so. Responding to the criticism,  Kahana, the Deputy Religious Affairs minister said that his remarks had been poorly worded.

Kahana spoke at an Efrat high school and was caught on recording stating that he doesn’t believe peace with the Palestinians is possible in the near future.

“If there were a button you could press that would make all the Arabs disappear, that would send them on an express train to Switzerland — may they live amazing lives there, I wish them all the best in the world — I would press that button,” he said.

“There is no such button,” he continued. “Apparently we were destined to exist here [together] on this land in some form.”

Kahana dismissed the two-state solution as untenable since the Palestinians “will never give up Beit Gamliel and Sheikh Munis — Tel Aviv University.” The latter is a reference to a Palestinian village whose residents were forced to leave in 1948, and which lay on land that today partly includes the university.

“The Arabs are telling themselves a different story, we know it’s untrue and nonsense,” Kahana said. “They are telling themselves that they are the ones who always lived here and we came and expelled them.”

The remark was condemned by several lawmakers, including from Kahana’s coalition party colleagues Ra’am, which made history last year as the first Arab party to fully join an Israeli coalition. The unlikely coalition has recently appeared closer than ever to collapse, with a handful of MKs from several parties either defecting outright or refusing to back the coalition in plenum votes.

“Matan Kahana, we are here because this is our homeland,” responded Ra’am MK Walid Taha. “You, and those who think like you, will continue to bear your frustration because we simply won’t disappear.”

MK Ahmad Tibi, from the predominantly Arab Joint List opposition party, tweeted that, “There is a button that will make you disappear from the government and from the Knesset. I will press it soon.” That was an apparent reference to the teetering coalition and to plans to present a motion to dissolve the current Knesset and call new elections.

MK Eli Avidar, from the right-wing Yisrael Beytenu party, also criticized Kahana’s statement, terming it “A miserable remark.” Avidar added that “It’s a shame it was said. The Arabs are Israeli citizens and they are here to stay. What we should do away with are bigoted remarks and opinions.”

Responding to the criticism, Kahana acknowledged on Tuesday morning that he had used a “poor choice of words.”

“In a conversation I held last night with students, I repeated the obvious notion that neither us nor the Arabs are going anywhere and that’s why we need to find a way to live here together,” he tweeted. “The current government is an important step in that direction. My flow of words included some poor phrasing.”