Culture Minister Miki Zohar, of the ruling Likud party, says Gaza belongs to Israel, and that Palestinians in the territory are “guests” whom Israel is merely allowing to live there for now.
“Gaza is also ours. We’re just letting them be there as guests until a certain point, but Gaza is ours,” Zohar says in an interview with the Kan public broadcaster.
He has expressed similar sentiments in the past.
Zohar makes the comments while explaining why he is considering denying funds to the Israeli film industry over its giving the top Ophir award, Israel’s most prestigious film prize, to a movie about a Palestinian boy from the West Bank who is denied an entry permit to visit the beach in Israelץ
While Zohar acknowledges having not watched the film, he claims that it portrays the IDF negatively and presents Israel as an occupier.
“Judea and Samaria is ours,” he says, using the biblical term for the West Bank. “We’re not occupiers in our own land.”
He adds that filmmakers who wish to receive government funds should “produce films that Israelis like to see. Not what Europeans like to see.”
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