U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon on Thursday lambasted Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s “ethnic cleansing” video as an “unacceptable and outrageous” portrayal of people who oppose Israeli settlements in the West Bank, home to more than 2.7 million Palestinians.

Ban told the United Nations Security Council, “Let me be absolutely clear: settlements are illegal under international law. The occupation, stifling and oppressive, must end.” He said Netanyahu’s statement was disturbing.

In a video message posted on Facebook last Friday, Netanyahu said the Palestinians wanted to form a state devoid of a Jewish population and called it “ethnic cleansing.”

The Palestinians hope to establish an independent state in the occupied West Bank along with the Gaza Strip and East Jerusalem as its capital. Israel captured the West Bank in the 1967 Arab-Israeli war. 

Israel continues to build Jewish-only settlements in the West Bank in what amounts to an apartheid system. 

Last Friday after viewing the video, U.S. State Department spokeswoman Elizabeth Trudeau called the Israeli leader’s words “inappropriate and unhelpful.”