I have frequently made the point, going back to Arafat days, that the Palestinian negotiations with Israel have been fraudulent.
I continued this claim throughout the apparent pragmatic and moderate tone of current PA leader, Mahmoud Abbas. While greeting Ehud Olmert and Tzipi Livni warmly during their periods of office, and more coldly to current Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, he reported back to his own people that he would never accept the concept of the Jewish State of Israel.
My clarion call has always been to listen to what the Palestinian leadership is telling its own people, not what they may say to Western diplomats and to the world's media.
The message to their own people is constant. The message is that the Jews are occupying Palestinian land. The message is that the 'armed struggle' will continue until all the land will be reclaimed to the last drop of sand, from the river (Jordan) to the sea (Mediterranean).
The message is that the Jews have no rights, no history, no claims, to any part of 'occupied Palestinian land'.
This mantra has been taken up by several European countries and leftist-liberal organisations and activists who wrongly assume that 'occupation' means Palestinian territory in Gaza, the West Bank, and other hotspots.
Occupation, to Palestinians and their radical supporters, really means Haifa, Tel Aviv, Netanya, Hadera, Beer Sheva, Tiberias, Afula, Raanana, Kfar Saba, Ashdod, Ashkelon, Yavne, etc., etc.
It certainly means Jerusalem. All of Jerusalem, not only east of the city.
They deny any Jewish claim to any plot of land in the State of Israel. They falsify and create a Palestinian narrative, history, culture, architecture to these places, dressing it in Arab and Islamic garb when Palestinian rights to these places is unsupportable.
Arafat denied that Jews had any claim on any part of Jerusalem. This falsehood has been perpetuated by the current leader Abbas who, at the recent PA Congress in Bethlehem, publicly claimed that all of Jerusalem is considered the Palestinian capital.
The Palestinian hijacking of Jerusalem took another step forward when the radical Islamic Chief Judge of the Palestinian Authority, Sheikh Tayseer Rajab Tamimi, declared that Jews have no history in Jerusalem, that there was no evidence to support Jewish claims that Jews ever existed in Jerusalem, or that there was ever a Jewish Temple there.
"Jerusalem", he said, "is an Arab and Islamic city and it always has been so."
"Israel" he said "was trying to turn Jerusalem into a Jewish city. This is a flagrant violation of all religious, legal, moral, and human values."
Tamimi's denial of Jewish history and heritage also, by direct implication, denies the source of Christianity.
Without the Jewish Temple and Jewish religious history to Jerusalem, Jesus never could have come to the Temple to pray.
According to Tamimi it must have been a mosque. But, hold on a minute, when the Jewish Jesus was walking the streets of Jerusalem and preaching there was no Islam. Mohammed had not conquered and killed in the name of Islam. So what was Jesus doing there? Or maybe there was no Jesus because, according to the informed cleric, no Jews lived in Jerusalem, there were no Jewish religious centres or synagogues, and there was certainly no JewishTemple.
In which case there could have been no Sanhedrin court that judged Jesus before he was handed over to the Romans. Or maybe the Sanhedrin was really an Islamic court performing Sharia law on Jesus?
And if Jews never populated Jerusalem and the Jewish Temples did not exist then what did the Babylonians and later the Romans destroy?
If they destroyed anything it must have been a mosque, according to Tamimian logic.
If this was not so serious it would be laughable. It is serious because this historic falsehood and denial is driving the Palestinian narative that is preventing a peaceful resolution of the region's conflict.
We are all prisoners to this dangerous illusion. It is this insane blindness that is at the root of a conflict of decades. It is this unreasonable denial that may keep us locked in conflict for decades to come.
