United Nations envoy to the Middle East Nikolay Mladenov. Photo: Wikimedia Commons.

JNS.org – Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu rebuked the United Nations envoy to the Middle East for his remarks on Tuesday harshly criticizing Israeli building in Judea and Samaria.

Nickolay Mladenov’s comments to the UN Security Council “distort history and international law and push peace farther away,” Netanyahu said in a statement.

“Jews have been in Jerusalem, Judea and Samaria for thousands of years and their presence there is not an obstacle to peace,” Netanyahu said. “The obstacle to peace is the unending attempt to deny the Jewish People’s connection to parts of their historic land and the obdurate refusal to recognize that they are not foreigners there.”

Mladenov briefed the UN Security Council about working toward a resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, emphasizing that all building in eastern Jerusalem, Judea and Samaria is considered illegal and “undermine[s] an already precarious situation.”

Netanyahu said Mladenov’s assertion is “as absurd as the claim that American construction in Washington or French construction in Paris is illegal. The Palestinian demand that a future Palestinian state be ethnically cleansed of Jews is outrageous, and the UN must condemn it instead of adopting it.”