US and Britain created Israel “to resolve the Jewish problem,” “to ensure their interests” and “harm” the Arabs
Official PA daily columnist Omar Hilmi Al-Ghoul: “Who established Israel? The capitalist Western states – the US and Britain and the rest of the European group – established it… They said: ‘We must find a foreign people to this [Middle East] region, because the possibilities of its revival, its unity, and its rise threaten the interests of the West.’ Therefore, they established this illegitimate state to resolve the Jewish problem that gave them no rest, and to give them additional monopoly profits in order to ensure their interests in this region and to harm the peoples of the Arab world and tear them to piece.”
[Official PA TV, Oct. 23, 2023]
Omar Hilmi Al-Ghoul is also a former advisor with the rank of minister to former PA Prime Minister Salam Fayyad on national affairs and a former PLO Central Council member.
"The Campbell-Bannerman plan" - PA leaders have often promoted a conspiracy theory denying Israel's legitimacy, claiming that Israel's establishment was the result of a British-led colonialist plot termed "the Campbell-Bannerman plan," which was recorded in a similarly named document. This alleged plan's goal was to create a "pawn" in the form of Israel that would keep the Arab peoples divided and backwards, in order to ensure European domination over the Middle East. The conspiracy theory apparently refers to the 1907 Imperial Conference led by former British Prime Minister Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman, the minutes of which disprove the PA's claims of a conspiracy to undermine the Middle East. In 2017 the conspiracy theory was investigated by Prof Dr. Mohsen Mohammad Saleh, head of the Al-Zaytouna Centre for Studies and Consultations, a Lebanese pro-Palestinian research institute. Saleh reported that he traveled to Britain to investigate the alleged document but "found no trace or source of it!" [Website of Al-Zaytouna, Political Analysis: Is the “Campbell-Bannerman Document”: Real or Fake?, Sept. 29, 2017] Saleh noted that former head of the PLO Research Center Dr. Anis Sayegh learned an Egyptian named Antoun Canaan was the first to write about the alleged document, and Sayegh learned in talking with Canaan that his source was an unidentified Indian man: "When [Canaan] travelled from Palestine to London to study law in the mid-1940s, he met in the plane an Indian man sitting next him. The man told him he remembers reading about a colonial conference held in London attended by delegates from several colonial powers to discuss the partition of the Arab nations, prevent their reunification, and the establishment of a Jewish state, but the Indian man did not give Canaan any documented academic material regarding the document." Nevertheless, PA leaders continue to cite the conspiracy theory in their attacks against Israel.