November 18, 2008 | 3:13 pm

Palestinian negotiator: Jews have no claim to Temple Mount

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

This is not an uncommon opinion among Palestinian leaders. It’s about politics and rhetoric and deception. And it’s ridiculous. Causes and solutions to the I-P conflict aside, you can’t argue that Jews have no historic connection to Jerusalem or the Temple Mount. Evidence of the Exodus may be thin but not that Jews inhabited Eretz Yisroel for millenia.

The story from the conservative WorldNetDaily, via Solomonia:

JERUSALEM - The Jewish Temples never existed and Israel has been working to “invent” a Jewish historical connection to Jerusalem, the chief Palestinian negotiator asserted.

Ahmed Qurei, the Palestinian Authority official leading all peace talks with the Jewish state, made the controversial statements in a small media briefing Wednesday attended by WND as well as by a Palestinian media outlet and an Arab affairs correspondent for a major Israeli newspaper.

But the Israeli publication decided not to print Qurei’s comments, while the Palestinian publication, the Al-Ayam daily newspaper, made news of the remarks.

Qurei said “Israeli occupation authorities are trying to find a so-called Jewish historical connection” between Jerusalem and the Temple Mount, “but all these attempts will fail. The [Temple Mount] is 100 percent Muslim.”

“The world must be mobilized against all these Israeli attempts to change the symbols and signs of Jerusalem,” he said. “There is nothing Jewish about the Al Aqsa Mosque. There was no so-called Jewish Temple. It’s imaginary. Jerusalem is 100 percent Muslim.”

Continued Qurei: “The Arab world is called to interfere to stop the Israeli plans in Jerusalem, to stop the Israeli attempts to create a Jewish character to Jerusalem and the Al Aqsa mosque. Also to the Old City, which is the first step in the war to defend Jerusalem and Al Aqsa.

“They are competing against time in order to create facts on ground in the surrounding the imaginary Temple,” Qurei added.

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