Bella Hadid takes on Israeli minister Ben-Gvir over his racist remarks

Israel's far-right national security minister sparred with United States supermodel Bella Hadid over his comments this week that Palestinians and Washington condemned as racist.

Bella Hadid, whose father is Palestinian, responded a day later, telling her nearly 60 million followers on Instagram: "In no place, no time, especially in 2023 should one life be more valuable than another's" - prompting a reaction in turn from the minister on Friday.

In an interview with N12 News on Wednesday, Itamar Ben-Gvir said that the right to life and safe travel of Israeli settlers in the occupied West Bank trumped the right to freedom of movement for Palestinians.

Palestinians have long railed against restrictions, including checkpoints and travel permits, imposed on them by Israel in the occupied West Bank, an area where they exercise limited self-rule and which they seek as part of a future state.

Ben-Gvir, who lives in the Israeli settlement of Kiryat Arba near the West Bank city of Hebron, told N12 News on Wednesday: "My right, my wife's right, my children's right to travel on the roads of Judea and Samaria is more important than the right to movement for Arabs," referring to the West Bank by its biblical Hebrew name.

On Friday, he responded to Hadid's post, calling her an "Israel hater" and saying she had shared only a segment of the interview on her social media account in order to portray him as a racist.

The Palestinian Foreign Ministry on Thursday condemned Ben-Gvir's remarks on N12 News as "racist and heinous" and the US State Department on Friday called his comments "inflammatory" and "racist".

Uneasy situation

Violence in the occupied West Bank has surged over the past 15 months, with frequent Israeli military raids, Palestinian street attacks and Israeli settler assaults on Palestinian villages.

Since January, at least 188 Palestinians and 35 Israelis and foreigners have been killed in hostilities.

A member of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's religious-nationalist coalition, Ben-Gvir has past convictions of support for terrorism and anti-Arab incitement. He says his views have become more moderate since joining the government, without going into further detail.

Israel captured the West Bank in the 1967 Middle East war. It has continued to expand dozens of settlements that are deemed illegal by the United Nations and most countries.