PA columnist denies the Jewish people existence and history before the British Mandate

Excerpt of a columnby Bassem Barhoum, regular columnist for the official PA daily

Headline: “Palestine between the Balfour Promise (i.e., Declaration) and the Trump Promise (i.e., Trump’s Middle East peace plan)”

“What is strange in these colonialists like [former] British [Foreign Secretary Arthur] Balfour and [former] American [President Donald] Trump is that they decide with full level-headedness to give a land that is not theirs – and to steal it from its original people (sic., the Palestinians have no history prior to the modern period) – to another people that they invented and assembled in order to serve their interests as part of a strategy that will ensure control for them over the Arab region (sic., an abundance of evidence proves Jewish history in Israel).”

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.