A Palestinian Authority (PA) minister was reportedly offended by an Australian-led delegation visiting Ramallah on Sunday whom he accused of spouting "twisted facts" about Palestinian incitement.
The delegation, led by Australian Minister for Industry, Science and Innovation Christopher Pyne and including British members of Parliament, met with PA Prime Minister Rami Hamdallah and Education Minister Sabri Saidam to discuss challenges in the region.
According to Saidam, the meeting at Hamdallah's office in Ramallah took an "explosive and challenging" turn when the group asked a series of "rude and blunt" questions and Pyne raised "a list of complaints."
Apparently, the delegation, which had just visited Israel as part of the Australia-Israel-United Kingdom Leadership Dialogue, posed questions to the Palestinians about honoring dead terrorists with street names, prompting an angry reaction from the ministers.
"The delegation had false information and twisted facts," Saidam told the Australian Broadcasting Company (ABC). “It was clear the delegation was not well educated."
He further asserted the envoys had been essentially brainwashed by their visit to Israel before the meeting in Ramallah.
Pyne, meanwhile, maintained to the ABC he had "very diplomatically asked the prime minister and the higher education minister questions which I thought would be useful for understanding the Palestinian attitudes to the peace process."
“Other members of the dialogue were slightly more robust and could be accused of quizzing them,” he added, referring to the British MPs.