Israel and Germany condemn Palestinian leader's '50 Holocausts' claim

Mahmoud Abbas made the claim during a news conference with German Chancellor Olaf Scholz in Berlin on Tuesday.

Mr Scholz said nothing at the time, but later called the president's comments "intolerable and unacceptable".

Israeli Prime Minister Yair Lapid said Mr Abbas's accusation was "not only a moral disgrace, but a monstrous lie".

"Six million Jews were murdered in the Holocaust, including one and a half million Jewish children," he tweeted. "History will never forgive him."

Following the criticism, Mr Abbas reaffirmed in a statement that "the Holocaust is the most heinous crime in modern human history".

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Mr Abbas travelled to Berlin with the aim of winning Germany's support for a bid by the Palestinians to join the United Nations as a full member state and asking it to help restart long-stalled peace talks with the Israelis.

After meeting Mr Scholz at the Federal Chancellery, the president was asked by reporters whether he planned to apologise to Israel and Germany ahead of the 50th anniversary of a deadly attack by Palestinian militants on Israeli athletes at the Munich Olympics.

He did not respond to the question directly, instead saying: "If we want to go over the past, go ahead."

"From 1947 to the present day, Israel has committed 50 massacres in Palestinian villages and cities - in Deir Yassin, Tantura, Kafr Qasim and many others - 50 massacres, 50 Holocausts. And until today, and every day, there are casualties killed by the Israeli military," he added.

Mr Scholz frowned while Mr Abbas spoke, but he did not rebuke him before advisers ended the news conference. He also shook hands with the president before they departed.

The leader of Germany's main opposition Christian Democratic Union (CDU) party, Friedrich Merz, tweeted that the news conference was "unbelievable" and that Mr Scholz "should have immediately contradicted the Palestinian president in no uncertain terms and asked him to leave".

Former CDU leader Armin Laschet said: "The PLO leader would have gained sympathy if he had apologised for the terrorist attack on Israeli athletes at the Munich Olympics 1972. Accusing Israel of '50 Holocausts' instead is the most disgusting speech ever heard in the German Chancellery."

The head of Israel's Yad Vashem Holocaust Remembrance Centre, Dani Dayan, called Mr Abbas's remarks "despicable " and "appalling", and called on the German government to "respond appropriately to this inexcusable behaviour done inside the Federal Chancellery".

It was several hours before Mr Scholz issued a statement to Germany's Bild newspaper that condemned the president.

"I am disgusted by the outrageous remarks made by Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas," the chancellor tweeted in English, German and Hebrew on Wednesday morning.

"For us Germans in particular, any relativization of the singularity of the Holocaust is intolerable and unacceptable. I condemn any attempt to deny the crimes of the Holocaust."

Mr Abbas's office later issued a statement "stressing that his answer was not intended to deny the singularity of the Holocaust that occurred in the last century, and condemning it in the strongest terms", the official Palestinian news agency Wafa reported.