The Foreign Office (FO) on Monday said Pakistan was “appalled” at the remarks made by an Israeli minister wherein he threatened the use of nuclear force against Palestinians.

Israeli Heritage Minister Amichay Eliyahu came under fire after he said during an interview with Israel’s Kol Barama radio that he was not entirely satisfied with the scale of Israel’s retaliation in the Palestinian territory.

To a question whether he advocated dropping “some kind of atomic bomb” on the Gaza Strip “to kill everyone”, Eliyahu had replied: “That’s one option”.

On Sunday, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office had said that Eliyahu was suspended from government meetings “until further notice”.

His office had described Eliyahu’s remarks as “disconnected from reality” and added that Israel was trying to spare “non-combatants” in Gaza.

“Eliyahu’s statements are not based in reality. Israel and the IDF (military) are operating in accordance with the highest standards of international law to avoid harming innocents. We will continue to do so until our victory,” Netanyahu’s office had said.

Despite the immediate reprimand, the junior minister’s inflammatory comments drew wide condemnation from within Israel and across the Middle East.

In a post on social media platform X today, FO spokesperson Mumtaz Zahra Baloch said, “We are appalled by the statement of an Israeli minister threatening nuclear force against Palestinians”.

She said the remarks reflected an “intention for ethnic cleansing and genocide”.

“This is a wake-up call for the international community to the threat posed by Israeli aggression to regional peace, security and stability,” she said.