Palestinian official claims Israel "created myths and fake history in order to prove its birthright to Palestine and Jerusalem in particular"

Official PA TV program Good Morning Jerusalem

Silwan and Al-Bustan Neighborhood Defense Committee member Fakhri Abu Diab: “First of all the occupation plans to establish biblical parks and paths in the area around the Old City [of Jerusalem] and the Al-Aqsa Mosque, and also to build settlements to house settlers, to close the horizon around the Al-Aqsa Mosque, and to distance that which characterizes this city and testifies to its Arab and Islamic identity. Therefore, it wants to change the appearance in this area.

The neighborhood of Al-Bustan behind me… the occupation gave demolition orders to all the homes on claims and pretexts that over 2,000 years ago this area was a cultural and historical heritage of the Jewish people (refers to orders against illegal construction on an archaeological site -Ed.). This has not been proven scientifically, historically, or even on the ground, as the occupation mobilized all its state capabilities [and conducted] excavations and [dug] tunnels and found no relic testifying to the civilization that the occupation wanted [to prove was here] (sic., an abundance of archaeological evidence proves Jewish history in Jerusalem). So it began falsifying history underground and aboveground…

In the area behind me, near the Al-Bustan neighborhood, there are 26 excavations and tunnels that the occupation and the occupation’s Judaizing arms are working on… to burrow, erase, destroy, and wreck all the antiquities in this area, which are either Canaanite, Roman, Arab, or Islamic, and it has not succeeded in finding any antiquity of its own (sic.). But it left behind several of them in order to endorse them and so that they will imitate myths and a fake history that the occupation has created, in order to prove its birthright to Palestine in general and here in Jerusalem in particular.”