This article was originally published by the Ma'an News Agency and is republished with permission.

Israeli Housing Minister Ariel Atias on Thursday warned against the growth of the country's Palestinian minority, according to news reports.

"I see [it] as a national duty to prevent the spread of a population that, to say the least, does not love the state of Israel," Atias said at an Israel Bar Association meeting, the Israeli newspaper Haaretz reported.

The official, a member of the religious right-wing Shas Party, was warning specifically against Palestinian citizens' presence at a housing community built by Haredi Jews in northern Israel and in what he said should be Jewish-only neighborhoods and cities

"[I]f we go on like we have until now, we will lose the Galilee. Populations that should not mix are spreading there. I don't think that it is appropriate [for them] to live together," Haaretz quoted the minister as saying.

"Look at what happened in Acre," Atias said, in reference to riots that broke out between Jewish and Muslim youth earlier last year on the eve of the Jewish Yom Kippur holiday.

Atias added, "The mayor of Acre visited me yesterday for three hours and asked me how his town could be saved," "He told me 'bring a bunch of Haredis and we'll save the city, even if I lose my political standing.'"

The minister suggested as a solution to the problem that the Housing Ministry allocate more lands on which Palestinian citizens of Israel could build, saying, "I plan to market large amounts of land to the Arab population in the Galilee in order to solve their problems, as well as land for secular and religious Jews."

Atias also criticized non-segregation between religious and secular Jews inside Israel, saying, "There is a severe housing crisis among the young ultra-Orthodox couples, and in the general population. I, as an ultra-Orthodox Jew, don't think that religious Jews should have to live in the same neighborhood as secular couples, so as to avoid unnecessary friction."

The official's comments came amid recent demands by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that Palestinians recognize Israel as Jewish state. The Palestinian Authority and Palestine Liberation Organization have repeatedly rejected such recognition, saying it would endanger the rights of the Israel's Palestinian minority.

Palestinians who were not expelled from land that became the state of Israel in 1948 were eventually granted citizenship and the right to vote, although they have complained for decades of state discrimination. The Muslims and Christians, who in Hebrew are generally referred to as "Israeli Arabs," make up just over 20 percent of the country's population.