Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich said that Israel will not make any concessions to the Palestinians as part of any normalization agreement with Saudi Arabia.

Smotrich, who heads the far-right religious Zionist party, added to Army Radio, “We will not make any concessions to the Palestinians; it’s a fantasy.”

He continued that despite Israel's interest in the deal mediated by the United States with Riyadh, it “has nothing to do with the West Bank.”

His comments come days after the United States warned Israel that it would have to make significant concessions to the Palestinians to secure a normalization agreement with the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.

U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken told Strategic Affairs Minister Ron Dermer that Israel is misreading the situation if it thinks there is no need to make important gestures to the Palestinians to appease the Saudis, who he said will need to show tangible results to other Arab and international countries, and Islamic countries if they want to make a deal with Israel.

In a separate context, the Finance Minister criticized the United States, describing it as “hypocrisy” after the Biden administration condemned National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir for saying that the right of Jews to travel and live safely in the West Bank is more important than the freedom of movement of Arabs.

Smotrich supports his far-right colleague, telling Army Radio that “there is no country more moral than Israel, and anyone in the world who attacks us is a hypocrite.”

I am not even talking about the Americans, about what they did in Afghanistan or in Iraq. They cannot lecture us about morals or human rights, and that is the greatest hypocrisy.”