WASHINGTON

Israeli leaders are offering genocide and ethnic cleansing to Palestinian people, Palestinian Foreign Minister Riyad al-Maliki said Tuesday. 

Al-Maliki said Israel has denied Palestinians existence, rights and humanity -- whether in Gaza, the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, or Palestinian refugees or Palestinian prisoners.

"They do not see our people as an empirical and political reality to exist with, but as a demographic threat to get rid of through this displacement or subjugation," he said at a UN Security Council meeting on Gaza.

"These are the choices they offer us; genocide, ethnic cleansing or apartheid. I know some here are uncomfortable with these words, but they are the reality that we live under," said al-Maliki.

He said there are only two paths ahead for the conflict between Palestine and Israel.

"One that starts with Palestinian freedom and leads to shared peace and security in our region, or one that continues denying this freedom and dooms our region to further bloodshed and endless conflict," he said/

The foreign minister also took aim at Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

"Netanyahu boasts publicly and repeatedly that he played the key role in preventing the independence of the Palestinian state and peace in our region and pledges to continue doing so," he said. "Israel should no longer entertain the illusion that there is somehow a third path whereby it can choose (to) continue to occupation and colonialism and apartheid, and somehow still achieve regional peace and security. This is not a viable path, nor illegitimate," he added.

Israel has mounted a deadly offensive on the Gaza Strip since a cross-border attack by the Palestinian resistance group, Hamas, which Tel Aviv said killed 1,200 people.

At least 25,490 Palestinians have since been killed, mostly women and children, and 63,354 injured, according to Palestinian health authorities.