Official Palestinian Authority Arabic-language media, under the control of PA Chairman Mahmoud Abbas, not only refuses to call Israel a Jewish state but also denies Jewish ties to the land. Abbas has consistently told English-speaking media he wants the PA and Israel to exist as two countries side-by-side.
The latest anti-Zionist invective appeared only five days ago in the official PA daily Al Hayat al-Jadida and was reported and translated by Palestine Media Watch.
The article went further than the usual PA ideology in its Arabic-language media, and instead of simply refusing recognizing Israel’s right to exist, it stated, “The Zionists must acknowledge publicly, in front of the world, that the Jews have no connection to the Palestinian Arab land, upon whose ruins arose the colonialist settler Zionist plan that settles and expels, represented by
the Israeli apartheid state.
“That which occurred two thousand years ago (i.e., the Jewish/Israeli presence in the land), assuming that it is true, represents in the book of history nothing more than invention and falsification and a coarse and crude form of colonialism."
The term “Palestinian Arab land” ostensibly refers to United Jerusalem, Judea and Samaria, but PA media, schools and official meetings have increasingly displayed maps declaring that all of Israel from the Mediterranean Sea to the Jordan and from the border of Lebanon to that of Egypt, is “Palestine” and not Israel.
The policy is an open contradiction of Abbas’ expressed desire to co-exist with Israel and is more consistent with the ideology of Hamas, Abbas’s new co-partner in his government. Hamas calls for the destruction of Israel.
Two weeks ago, despite Abbas’ declarations to the United States that it has stopped anti-Israeli propaganda in its school system, a 12th-grade textbook in use today and published by the PA Ministry of Education also denies Israel’s right to the entire country.
As translated by PMW, the textbook states on page 104, “Palestine's war ended with a catastrophe that is unprecedented in history, when the Zionist gangs stole Palestine and expelled its people from their cities, their villages, their lands and their houses, and established the State of Israel."
Two weeks ago, a representative of Abbas said in a speech also reported and translated by PMW, "We say to him [Netanyahu], when he claims - that they [Jews] have a historical right dating back to 3000 years BCE - we say that the nation of Palestine upon the land of Canaan had a 7000 year history BCE. This is the truth…. 'Netanyahu, you are incidental in history. We are the people of history. We are the owners of history."