Arafat’s associate admits “Palestinians” are a modern invention
"The [Ottoman] Turks [were here] for 400 years, and they all left, and then the Palestinian people arrived" – veteran Fatah official and terrorist on PA TV
Statement exposes the lies of Abbas and his top officials claiming 5,000, 6,000, 9,000, and 10,000 years of "Palestinian history"
There is an old Jewish expression based on the Talmud (Shabbat 104A) that says: "A lie has no legs." True to the expression, a senior Fatah official – in a surprising moment of clarity on official Palestinian Authority TV – unwittingly exposed the fundamental lie of "Palestinian history" in all its legless glory.
Salim Al-Zre'i, a Fatah Revolutionary Council member and associate of former PLO and PA Chairman Yasser Arafat, made the bombshell statement right after saying "history is a pure driving force." The veteran Fatah terrorist, who took part in the 1968 Karameh battle against Israel in Jordan, admitted that "the Palestinian people arrived" only after the 400 years of Ottoman occupation of the Land of Israel:
Fatah Revolutionary Council member and veteran terrorist Salim Al-Zre'i: "The wars will only end when [the Palestinians] will restore [their] rights. The Israelis will not achieve security or peace as long as Palestine is occupied. This is according to the logic of history, and history is a pure driving force...
Believe me, [the Israelis] will necessarily disappear from Palestine and not one of them will remain on this land. The Crusaders were here for 200 years, the [Ottoman] Turks for 400 years, and they all left, and then the Palestinian people arrived."
[Official PA TV, At War, May 19, 2025]
The Ottoman Empire's rule over Israel ended in 1917 during World War I. If the Palestinians only arrived after that time according to Al-Zre'i, it follows that he unwittingly acknowledged the historical fact that "Palestinian peoplehood" is a modern invention.
This statement of course flies in the face of decades of PA lies. The entire Palestinian narrative is based on a fabricated Palestinian history, claiming an unfounded historical right to the Land of Israel. Accompanying this lie is a denial of Jewish history in Israel, in order to delegitimize the Jewish state. The PA has long usurped Jewish history, such as when former PA Prime Minister Muhammad Shtayyeh replaced the Jews with Palestinians in recounting the historical enemies of the Jewish people:
PA PM Muhammad Shtayyeh: "We are the people of the land and the children of its soil… We have defeated the Hyksos, the Romans, the Greeks, the Persians, the Tatars, and the Pharaohs. We have defeated all the invaders who passed through the land of Palestine. On behalf of the Martyrs we will defeat this hated occupation [Israel] that will leave our land."
[Official PA TV Live, Jan. 9, 2022]
A similar usurping of Jewish history was presented in an official PA TV music video broadcast hundreds of times, which showed a woman representing "the Palestinians" overcoming the Romans, the Crusaders, and the British, before facing the Jews.
So just how far back does the invented "Palestinian history" go? It depends which PA official you ask, and which day of the month you ask them.
PA Chairman Mahmoud Abbas' senior advisor Mahmoud Al-Habbash claimed "6,000 years" of Palestinian history just this April, claiming it predates "the Hebrews":
PA Chairman Mahmoud Abbas' Advisor on Religious Affairs and Islamic Relations Mahmoud Al-Habbash: "The Palestinian people's existence has not been cut off, it has not been cut off for the past 6,000 years, since the time of the Canaanites, and even before the Canaanites. We have been in this land even before something known as the Hebrews existed, or even before our lord Abraham arrived in this land."
[PA Chairman Mahmoud Abbas' Advisor on Religious Affairs and Islamic Relations Mahmoud Al-Habbash, Facebook page, April 9, 2025]
The claim of "6,000 years" is nothing new for Al-Habbash, who gave the same number in February, adding: "The Palestinian people is the one that created the civilization and history of this land" [Mahmoud Al-Habbash, YouTube channel, Feb. 12, 2025]. He evidently lacked the self-awareness to see the irony of saying the Palestinians are "creating history."
However, the figures don't seem to mean much to Al-Habbash, because he has also claimed "5,000 years" of Palestinian history:
"Al-Habbash [said that]… it has been proven that the continuous truth in this land is the Palestinian people, whose Canaanite ancestors lived in it more than 5,000 years ago, and which has continued to live in it without a break until this very day."
[WAFA, official PA news agency, March 20, 2023]
So 5,000 years jumped to 6,000 – but why stop there? Abbas himself, in a speech delivered on his behalf in Gaza, claimed no less than 9,000 years of history going back to 7,000 BCE: "We say that the nation of Palestine upon the land of Canaan had a 7,000-year history BCE" [Official PA TV, May 14, 2011].
Don't get too comfortable with 9,000 years though, because the Palestinians have already moved on to 10,000 years of fictional history. Fatah's Waed magazine for young children aged 6-15 claimed Palestinians are descendants of a "Palestinian-Arab-Canaanite" people who existed "5,000 years ago," or "perhaps 10,000 years ago" (Waed, Issue 37, pp. 13 and 22).
This claim of 10,000 years has proven particularly popular with columnists of the official PA daily. Regular columnist Bakr Abu Bakr, who is also a Fatah Revolutionary Council member, wrote: "There is no doubt about the Arabness of Palestine for the last 10,000 years, as [PA] President Mahmoud Abbas noted in his latest speech in Istanbul" [Official PA daily Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, Dec. 19, 2017].
Another regular columnist Omar Hilmi Al-Ghoul wrote: "Historical Palestine is the homeland of the Palestinian people, and not of any other people, since the first man was there 10,000 years ago, in Jericho, the most ancient city in history" [Official PA daily Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, Oct. 31, 2016].
Sometimes the PA columnists don't bother with putting a number to their non-existent history. Such was the case of columnist Bassem Barhoum, who claimed Palestinians have "the longest history" while throwing in a usurping of Jewish history for good measure:
Headline: "The Palestinians' connection to their land – the longest history"
"For thousands of years, the only permanent thing in the history of Palestine is the fact that the human society that in time received the name ‘the Palestinian people' is the one that has existed for the longest time on the land between the [Jordan] River and the [Mediterranean] Sea. All the invaders who arrived in Palestine – Assyrians, Babylonians, Persians, Greeks, Romans, and later on Crusaders – all these waves came and went, while the essential population remained connected to the land."
[Official PA daily Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, March 28, 2024]
But let's be honest, sometimes claiming thousands of years of history or "the longest history" just isn't enough to scratch the itch of blatant historical fraud. That's when the PA leaders bring out their ultimate weapon: "The dawn of history."
Abbas himself resorted to this mother of all lies in a 2023 speech he delivered at the UN, no less. As reported by an official PA daily columnist, Abbas said in his speech:
"The clear and only truth is that we were here on our land since the dawn of history, and we will remain until the end of the world."
[Official PA daily Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, May 17, 2023]
Former PA PM Shtayyeh also got in on the action, claiming a Palestinian presence "since the dawn of human history":
"Shtayyeh said... that history and all the archaeological artifacts prove that the Palestinians have been holding onto their land since the dawn of human history.
He continued: ‘We are the ones who gave Palestine its name and the land its value and its status. This land is ours. Israel is a colonialist state that was established by colonialists and settlers, and which expanded like every settler colonialism throughout history. We have learned from history that colonialism passes in the end.'"
[Official PA daily Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, March 21, 2023]
And what starts at the top trickles down through the media, as seen when columnist and Fatah Revolutionary Council member Muwaffaq Matar unabashedly wrote: "The historians have documented for human memory only the land of Palestine and its people who dwells permanently, which has increased in it since the dawn of history" [Official PA daily Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, Dec. 19, 2021].
The same columnist doubled down on this ahistorical claim, writing:
"Since the dawn of history and before the construction of Noah's ark, even when a number of branches of our tree broke, our roots remained here."
[Official PA daily Al-Hayat Al-Jadida website, May 14, 2024]
Given the current preoccupation with Hamas, it should be noted that this ludicrous claim of Palestinian identity since "the dawn of history" is in fact a common denominator between the PA and Hamas, just like their common stated goals of destroying Israel.
The 1988 Hamas Charter explicitly states: "Palestine is the navel of the globe and the crossroad of the continents. Since the dawn of history, it has been the target of expansionists." The charter goes on to call for the violent destruction of Israel in no uncertain terms, which is of course the logical outcome of the PA narrative about an invented "Palestinian history."
But as the statement by Fatah official Al-Zre'i quoted above demonstrates, even the Palestinians seem secretly aware that their lie has no legs.