History distortion: Israel "commits theft and forgery" of "Palestinian archaeological and religious sites" to "appropriate them to the occupation’s stories and colonialist expansion ideology"
Headline: “The [PA] Ministry of Foreign Affairs demands that the relevant international organizations protect the Palestinian archaeological sites”
“The [PA] Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Expatriates demanded that the international community and the relevant international councils and organizations – and foremost among them UNESCO (UN Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization) – provide protection for the Palestinian archaeological and religious sites against the occupation’s theft and against the crime of changing and forging their identifying marks (sic., the Palestinians have no history prior to the modern period).
On the same matter, the ministry condemned the fact that in various areas of the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, the occupation has taken control of hundreds of Palestinian archaeological sites and made them Israeli. This is in order to justify the occupation’s narrative and give it legitimacy by determining new facts on the ground, changing the identifying marks of these sites, and appropriating them to the occupation’s stories and its colonialist expansion ideology, in a manner that eventually serves the settlement expansion at the expense of the land of the State of Palestine.
The Ministry of Foreign Affairs said in a statement yesterday [March 10, 2021]: ‘They are generally taking control of archaeological sites through laws, racist orders, and various baseless excuses. This is not summed up by the theft of archaeological sites; the occupation is also stealing antiquities, falsifying them, and presenting them in many museums as evidence for its misleading colonialist claims, as part of a systematic process of forging history, geography, and human heritage (sic., Israel is not falsifying archaeological finds, which have conclusively proven the ancient Jewish connection to the Land of Israel).
At the same time, senior Israeli officials are not hiding their pride in the policy of stealing the Palestinian archaeological sites and Judaizing them. The latest of them was [former Israeli Minister of Defense] Naftali Bennett, who explicitly declared he wants to expand the Israeli control over more sites like these, on the pretext that they are “Jewish and must be protected.” The result is the expansion of the Israeli control over the Palestinian land and the implementation of the gradual annexation.’”