China, many Arab nations and Iran condemned an Israeli minister's statement that an option in Israel's war against Hamas could be to drop a nuclear bomb on the Gaza Strip.

At Monday's opening of a U.N. conference whose goal is to establish a nuclear-free zone in the Middle East, speaker after speaker said the Israeli statement posed a threat to the region and the wider international community.

The condemnations and criticisms were in response to comments by Israel's Heritage Minister Amihai Eliyahu on the possible use of nuclear weapons in Gaza in a radio interview on Sunday. His remarks were quickly disavowed by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who suspended Eliyahu from cabinet meetings.

Israel has neither confirmed nor denied its nuclear capability. It is widely believed to possess nuclear weapons, and a former employee at its nuclear reactor served 18 years in Israeli prison for leaking details and pictures of Israel’s alleged nuclear weapons program to a British newspaper in 1986.

China's deputy U.N. ambassador Geng Shuang said Beijing was "shocked" at what "Israeli officials said about the use of nuclear weapons in the Gaza Strip," calling the statements "extremely irresponsible and disturbing" and saying they should be universally condemned.

He stressed that the statements run "counter to the international consensus that a nuclear war cannot be won and must not be fought." And he urged Israeli officials to retract the statement and become a party to the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, considered the cornerstone of nuclear disarmament, as a non-nuclear weapon state "as soon as possible."