(Andrew Friedman/TPS) Deputy Foreign Minister Tzipi Hotovely said Tuesday that peace with the Palestinians has not materialised because Israel’s conflict with the Palestinians is not a territorial conflict.

Speaking at a Knesset session to mark the 40th anniversary of Egyptian President Anwar Sadat’s 1977 visit to Jerusalem, Hotovely said peace was achieved between Israel and Egypt because “Egypt had military ethos – they had history, and they said that the Sinai Peninsula was what stood between us and peace.”

“But,” she continued, “our clash with the Palestinians is not territorial. They have received offer after offer, and rejected them all. No. This is an existential fight – whenever the sides have come close to signing a deal, it has always come back to the same issue: The right of return. 70 years after the the State of Israel was established, Abu Mazen still to find homes for what he calls 7 million “refugees.”

Hotovely said the lack of peace with the Palestinians remains an “open sore,” and that every Israeli leader is a “Menachem Begin.”