PA TV denies Jewish history at the Western Wall
Official PA TV narrator: “According to the orders that were issued in the Ottoman period and recorded a number of times in a manner that leaves no room for doubt, the blessed Al-Aqsa Mosque is on 144 dunams (i.e., 144,000 square meters) of territory, including the Al-Buraq Wall (i.e., the Western Wall), which is the property of the Muslims and a holy site for them. During the British occupation they continued to preserve this situation as it was, as it had been when Britain took control of it from the Ottomans, and it was emphasized that it must be respected and not be harmed, changed, or distorted. There is no documentation that the Jews used the Al-Buraq Wall as a place of worship at any time until after the issuing of the 1917 Balfour Declaration (sic.)"
The claim by official PA TV that no documentation exists of Jews using the Western Wall as place of worship prior to the Balfour Declaration of 1917 is false. Historical records show that the Western Wall has been a site of Jewish worship for hundreds of years.
The Al-Buraq Wall - Islam's Prophet Muhammad is said to have ridden during his Night Journey from Mecca to "al aqsa mosque", i.e., "the farthest mosque" (Quran, Sura 17), and there tied his miraculous flying steed named Al-Buraq to a "stone" or a "rock." (Jami` at-Tirmidhi, Book 47, Hadith 3424). In the 1920's, Arab Mufti Haj Amin Al-Husseini decided to identify the Western Wall of the Temple in Jerusalem as that "rock" or "stone," and since then Muslims refer to the Western Wall as the "Al-Buraq Wall."
The Balfour Declaration of Nov. 2, 1917 was a letter from British Foreign Secretary Arthur Balfour to Baron Rothschild stating that "His Majesty's government views with favour the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people." In 1922, the League of Nations adopted this and made the British Mandate "responsible for putting into effect the declaration," which led to the UN vote in favor of partitioning Mandatory Palestine into a Jewish state and an Arab state in 1947. In response, Britain ended its mandate on May 15, 1948, and the Palestinian Jews, who accepted the Partition Plan, declared the independent State of Israel. The Palestinian Arabs rejected the plan and together with 7 Arab states attacked Israel, in what is now known as Israel's War of Independence.