WEST BANK (Dispatches) – A senior member of the Zionist regime’s fragile coalition cabinet has been criticized for saying that he would deport all Palestinians in the occupied territories to Switzerland if he could. 

Deputy religious affairs minister Matan Kahana from Prime Minister Naftali Bennett’s right-wing Yamina party made the remarks in a speech at a boy’s religious high school in the illegal settlement of Efrat in occupied Bethlehem.

The video clip aired by Israeli channel Kan shows Kahana saying: “If there was a button I could press that would take all the Arabs and put them on a train to Switzerland, I would.”

The remarks by Kahana faced a backlash on Twitter.

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

Knesset member Ahmad Tibi, from the predominantly Arab Joint List opposition party, tweeted: “There is a button that will make you disappear from the cabinet and from the Knesset. I will press it soon.” His words have been interpreted to suggest that the teetering coalition will soon collapse amid plans to present a motion to dissolve the current Knesset and call a new General Election.

 

Cabinet Close to Implosion

 

The Zionist regime’s fragile coalition appears closer to collapse after a lawmaker from prime minister Naftali Bennett’s right-wing Yamina Party said he was “no longer part” of the cabinet.

The development came as Bennett’s coalition with deep chasms, which includes hard right and Arab parties, has staggered ever closer to implosion, a year after it ended Benjamin Netanyahu’s record 12-year rule.

“I have informed the prime minister that based on the current situation, I am no longer part of the coalition,” Nir Orbach said in a statement published by several Israeli media outlets. 

Bennett’s coalition was sworn in last June after his predecessor Netanyahu was ruled unfit for the job following several indecisive elections.

Orbach, who was the third legislator to leave Bennett’s far-right Yamina Party, said he wanted to avoid another election.

His departure has left Bennett’s coalition with 59 seats in the 120-member Knesset— two sits short of the majority it needs to be able to pass laws.

Netanyahu, now head of the opposition and vowing a comeback despite being on trial for corruption, said the ruling coalition was holding “one of the longest funerals in history.”

By his own admission, Bennett’s coalition may collapse within “a week or two” unless the MKs who have quit choose to return. “If they don’t, then we cannot [continue],” Bennett said.

“We are fighting because the choice is between chaos and stability,” he alleged, claiming that his coalition “isn’t perfect, but the alternative isn’t better.”

Netanyahu responded by saying, “You are not fighting” for the occupying regime “but for your own seat.”