Senior Palestinian Authority officials continue to deny the Jewish connection to Jerusalem, and to the Temple Mount in particular. PA Minister for Religions Affairs Mahmoud el-Habash recently declared that the Western Wall (Kotel) is “exclusively Palestinian.”

“Nobody but Muslims used it as a place of worship at any point in history, except after the bad-news Balfour Declaration in 1917,” Habash claimed. His comments were picked up and translated by the Palestinian Media Watch organization.