PA daily op-ed: Arab Canaanites are ancestors of the Palestinians, and the history of “Palestine” is “purely Arab and Islamic”

Op-ed by Fatah Revolutionary Council member Bakr Abu Bakr, regular columnist for the official PA daily:     “Should we strive for the militant way of thinking, according to which we cannot relinquish even a single grain of [our] demands or of Palestinian land, on which no non-Arab race has ever tread without being driven out? Palestine was never the cradle of any of the prophets of Israel (the extinct Yemenite Arab tribe, to which the Jews living in Palestine today bear no relation) [parenthesis in source], nor did it ever serve as the setting for any temple or the other Biblical myths. How will we correct history and turn it [Palestine] into clear fact? Will we bear on our shoulders today the trust of the Arab, Islamic and Christian [character] of Palestine through the power of thought, history, facts and the true scientific narrative versus the false Israeli narrative, which is full of fairy tales? ... We are at the beginning of the path started by the founder of the Palestinian state in the 18th century, Daher Al-Omar Al-Zaidani, followed by Yasser Arafat, and the Arab Canaanites and purely Arab and Islamic history that preceded them.”

Note: Daher Al-Omar Al-Zaidani, an Arab native of Ottoman-controlled Galilee, was the independent ruler of Northern Palestine in the mid-18th century. Al-Omar founded the modern city of Haifa and fortified numerous cities, creating – with foreign assistance – an autonomous territory that was legitimized by the Ottoman authorities, who awarded him the title of “Sheikh of the Galilee”. Remembered for his relatively enlightened economic policies and tolerance toward Jews and Christians, Al-Omar is often cited as a pioneer of Arab liberation from foreign occupation and – by some contemporary authors – as a forerunner of Palestinian nationalism.