i24News reports that on the occurrence of Tisha B’Av, Israel’s Ambassador to the United Nations Gilad Erdan slammed the Security Council and Palestinian representatives for perpetuating Palestinian refugee status and the conflict as a whole.

”Let me be clear: There is no ‘right of return.’ You all know this. The demand of returning millions of descendants of refugees is a demand to obliterate the Jewish people’s right to self-determination, and this will never happen,” Erdan told the Council during a meeting on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

“It is the saddest day on the Jewish calendar. It is a day of solemn mourning. A day of fasting and prayer during which we commemorate the destruction of both our Temples,” he continued, referring to the fasting day which marks the destruction of the Second Temple at the hands of Roman soldiers.

“Today, Jews can only pray at the Temple’s only remaining structure – the Wailing Wall. But, thank God, Jewish sovereignty has once again returned to the Jewish homeland and above all, to Jerusalem, our eternal capital.”

Erdan pointed to refugee camps in the West Bank under the auspices of the Palestinian Authority (PA), such as the volatile Jenin camp.

“How can it be that after so many decades there are still refugee camps inside Palestinian cities? If the PA’s main goal is truly to establish an independent state, then these second- and third-generation refugees would be living in regular Palestinian cities and not camps. But this is not the Palestinians’ goal. Their goal is the annihilation of the Jewish state.”

The ambassador concluded by referring to what he called the “real obstacles that must be removed for reconciliation” with the Palestinian side, charging that the UN wasn’t doing enough in pressuring if the UN assisted in pressuring Gaza’s ruling Hamas terror group to compromise on certain issues.

Source - i24News/Twitter - Image - Reuters