The Israeli minister’s remarks “contradict with all laws, customs, and moral values and lacks the responsibility that any official holding a formal position should have,” the Egyptian Ministry of Foreign Affairs said in a statement.

The foreign ministry said that Egypt calls for a cessation of provocative actions against the Palestinian people and an end to unilateral measures.

The ministry added that this would achieve calm and create an environment conducive to the resumption of the peace process on the basis of the two-state solution.

It stressed that the resumption of the peace process is the only way to achieve comprehensive and just peace in the region.

The ministry also highlighted the need for the establishment of an independent Palestinian state on the June 1967 borders with East Jerusalem as its capital.

Israel’s Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich said on Wednesday that he thinks the state of Israel should “wipe out” the village of Huwara in the West Bank in the wake of the killing of two Israelis residing in a nearby Israeli settlement.

Smotrich’s remarks has triggered a wave of international condemnation, including by the US, which described the comments as “irresponsible, repugnant, and disgusting.”

The Israeli minister’s comments also come amid heightened Israeli violence in the Palestinian lands, especially the occupied West Bank, over the past weeks.

Last week, hundreds of rampaging settlers – 300 to 400 people, according to the Israeli occupation army – set homes and cars ablaze in Huwara village, while a Palestinian man was killed in the nearby village of Zaatara.

After the attacks, Palestinian envoy to the United Nations Riyad Mansour called for the Security Council to protect Palestinian civilians and Israeli Defence Minister Yoav Gallant warned that Israel "cannot allow a situation in which citizens take the law into their [own] hands."

The West Bank is home to about 2.9 million Palestinians as well as an estimated 475,000 Jewish settlers, who live in state-approved settlements that are considered illegal under international law.