RAMALLAH, April 27 (Xinhua) -- The Palestinian foreign ministry on Thursday condemned the remarks of the European Commission president on Israel's 75th Independence Day.
The ministry said in a statement that it rejects "the inappropriate, false, and discriminatory remarks by Ursula von der Leyen on Israel's 75th anniversary."
In a congratulatory video message published on Wednesday, von der Leyen lauded Israel for having "made the desert bloom," sparking the Palestinian ministry to slam it as an "anti-Palestinian racist trope."
"Such propagandist discourse dehumanizes and erases the Palestinian people and falsifies their rich history and civilization," said the statement.
"Likewise, such narrative perpetuates the continued and racist denial of the Nakba and whitewashes Israel's illegal occupation of the Palestinian territories and apartheid regime," it added.
The foreign ministry also said that "such adoption of anti-Palestinian rhetoric undermines the European Union's standing and casts serious doubts on its declared commitment to international law and human rights.
"Her remarks are also a betrayal to European citizens who do not endorse such racist erasure of the Palestinian people," said the statement, which called von der Leyen "to apologize to the European citizens and the Palestinian people for her remarks."
Von der Leyen'remarks have sparked an unusual diplomatic spat between the Palestinian Authority (PA) and the European Union (EU), its main donor. ■
