Israel’s ambassador to the United Nations, Gilad Erdan said, on Thursday, that Palestinians “have no right to return” to their homes.

“Let me be clear, there is no right of return. You all know this,” Gilad Erdan told a UN Security Council meeting, Anadolu Agency reports.

“The demand of millions of descendants of refugees returning to obliterate the Jewish people’s right to self-determination and this will never happen.”

According to UNRWA, the UN’s Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees, there are currently 5.9 million Palestinian refugees in the Gaza Strip, the West Bank as well as neighboring countries in the Middle East,

For his part, the Palestinian ambassador to the UN Riyad Mansour, said that there are more than 700,000 Israeli settlers in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem.

“The Israeli occupation is a settler-colonial occupation,” he said. “The only way the international community can end it is to address its settler-colonial nature.”

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Mansour also called for UN resolutions to be translated into an action plan with measures to be taken by every “peace-loving” state to dissuade Israel from entrenching its occupation.

Israel occupied East Jerusalem, where Muslim and Christian holy sites are located, during the 1967 war.

It annexed the entire city in 1980, a move that was never recognized by the international community.

Israeli forces and illegal Jewish settlers frequently carry out raids at Al-Aqsa Mosque, one of the holiest Muslim sites anywhere, to provoke Palestinians.

Recent years have seen the Israeli raids grow larger and more brazen.

Tensions have been running high across the Occupied West Bank in recent months, amid repeated Israeli raids into Palestinian towns and refugee camps.

(MEMO, PC)