The Palestinian Authority (PA)’s presentation of Israel as a foreign colonial implant in the Middle East is one of the most fundamental parts of its ideology, around which the PA has built the Palestinian identity.

The PA’s denial of thousands of years of Jewish history in the Land of Israel includes the lies that Jews did not live there and would never have thought of settling there until Western colonialism “planted” them in “Palestine.”

According to the false PA narrative, the West hatched Zionism to solve its Jewish problem by getting rid of its society-destroying Jews, who could then serve as a front line “against the Arab states” in the region.

PA leader Mahmoud Abbas explained that Europeans in general suffered from the Jews and “even Hitler …  fought the Jews because they worked based on usury and money, in other words, they caused ruin.” Getting rid of the harmful Jews and having a colonial implant is what Abbas called “two birds with one stone.”

The colonialism narrative is central to PA ideology, as it denies Israel any rights to exist in any borders. It also efficiently creates backing around the world for the PA’s claim to “Palestine from the river to the sea.” During the current war, this slogan and the colonialism narrative have been adopted by pro-Palestinian protesters internationally as a definitive truth.

This “satanic project” — as Abbas’ advisor Mahmoud Al-Habbash terms Zionism and the creation of Israel — was started by the British, which “brought in strangers who had no connection to Palestine.”

The PA claims that international colonialism wanted to destabilize the Arab region and therefore “created the Zionist idea” and “planted” the Jews in “Palestine”:

Abbas’ advisor: “The British Mandate opened the doors to Jewish immigration to Palestine and brought in strangers who had no connection to Palestine …

Maybe the world will not recognize the [Palestinian] political entity but rather [only] a part of the historical homeland, but the historical homeland will remain all of Palestine (i.e., all of Israel) for all the Palestinians … 

[Mahmoud Al-Habbash, Facebook page, Nov. 29, 2024]

Palestinian Media Watch has exposed numerous statements by Al-Habbash in which he has labeled Jews and Israelis as “Satan” and “evil.”

According to Al-Habbash, Israel now serves “the American colonialist project,” and Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu “exploited” Hamas’ massacre and launch of its terror war against Israel on Oct. 7, 2023 for this “satanic plot”:

Al-Habbash: “[Israeli Prime Minister] Netanyahu exploited what happened on Oct. 7, 2023 to carry out his satanic plot that strives to eliminate the Palestinian cause and expand the scope of the war into a regional war, with which he will outline anew the geographical and political maps of the region in a way that will serve the American colonialist project, which strives for hegemony and colonialism of a new kind in the Arab region.”

[Mahmoud Al-Habbash, Facebook page, Oct. 9, 2024]

Similarly, top PA and Fatah official Jibril Rajoub has claimed that “the Americans and the Europeans” use Israel to “control the entire region” and its resources:

Fatah Central Committee Secretary Jibril Rajoub: “[Israel] is a project that targets the entire Middle East region.

Israel is a guarantee for the Americans and Europeans to control this entire region, its oil, its sea routes, its economy, everything in it.”

[Jibril Rajoub, Facebook page, Jan. 15, 2025]

The PA’s answer to why Jews went along with the West’s plans and willingly established themselves in “Palestine,” to which they had no connection, is answered by PA antisemitic ideology: The Jews came for money, lured here by the West with promises that they could earn more money in “Palestine” than elsewhere:

Advisor to Head of The Committee to Resist Settlements and the Wall Ayed Morrar: “If an opportunity was given to the expansionist occupation [i.e., Israel] to settle in Egypt and Jordan they would not miss the opportunity …

There is no religious or emotional connection between a resident  of the occupation state and this state. They told him: You earn $1,000 in France, in Palestine you can earn $1,200 or $1,500, and therefore he came for this reason, with international support, to be a military base for the West in the Middle East.”

[Official PA TV, Dec. 12, 2024]

A different explanation was provided by a Tunisian academic who explained that “traditional colonialism” was in fact “Zionist colonialism”:

Political science lecturer Dr. Ibrahim Al-Rifa’i: “Was traditional colonialism just French and British?”

Official PA TV host: “Or Italian?”

Ibrahim Al-Rifa’i: “It was actually Zionist colonialism … They [the Jews] think that the entire world that is outside the circle of Zionism are goyim [i.e., non-Jews] and that Zionist globalization should rule, and they have been waging a world war ever since the time before traditional colonialism. Traditional colonialism was completely Zionist. This colonialism with its various names — British, English, French — was just Zionist colonialism.”

[Official PA TV, Capital of Capitals – Tunis, Feb. 12, 2025]

Official PA TV helps cement the PA narrative that Israel was created as a colonialist outpost. A host on PA TV taught viewers that because the Middle East was “a threat” to “European and American capitalism,” Israel was created as “a hostile entity” in the Arab region and as “a friend to colonialism”:

Official PA TV host: “The establishment of Israel was not a Jewish project, but rather a Zionist project at the initiative of the Zionist bourgeoisie that was all an appendix of the European and American capitalism.

The first who suggested turning this into a realistic fact was [former] British Prime Minister [Sir Henry Campbell-] Bannerman. At the start of a European conference at the start of the 20^th century, he said: ‘The European civilization is under threat of disintegration and extinction, and it is our duty to find an effective way to prevent its collapse.’

Then the conference arrived at a plan that requires thwarting any unification or agreement between the Middle East countries because they constitute the only threat to the future of Europe, and the means of achieving this [solution to the problem] is establishing an external national entity that is foreign to the region, hostile to its residents, and a friend to colonialism.”

[Official PA TV, The Philosophy of Endurance, Oct. 26, 2024]

A former PA Security Forces major general stressed that it was Britain that led “the theft” of “Palestine” for the benefit of the “large colonialist project”:

PA Security Forces Maj. Gen. (ret.) Ahmed Issa: “Israel is the only state that was not established by its people on its land. It was established through theft, and it is a product of a large colonialist project led by the colonialist states under the leadership of Britain.”

[Official PA TV, Israel in the News, Oct. 28, 2024]

Abbas’ Fatah Movement sees itself as engaging in “the struggle” ever since in order to “liberate Palestine” from “colonialism”:

Fatah Revolutionary Council member Ahmed Ghneim: “This revolutionary [Fatah] leadership constituted the backbone of Fatah and played a decisive role in the resolution of the Palestinian people against the Israeli occupation, in addition to its central role in developing the strategy of Fatah, which has not stopped aspiring to liberate the Palestinian territories from colonialism.”

[Al-Quds, Jan. 7, 2025]

Similarly, a regular columnist for the official PA daily claimed that “Israel is a tool for the Crusader states” and all the American administrations:

Columnist for official PA daily Omar Hilmi Al-Ghoul: “Israel is a tool … which is pushing towards turning the conflict from a political, economic, cultural, and social conflict into a religious conflict.

The Crusader states, which still have the idea of settling accounts with the Arabs and Muslims nesting in their minds, are still continuing to revolve around [this idea].

[Official PA TV, Sept. 24, 2024]

Palestinian Media Watch reported on a column in the official PA daily in which the writer compared “the colonial West” to the Greek god Zeus giving Israel/Pandora a box of weapons that Israel opened, and that now sows death and destruction in the world.

Representatives from the PLO also support this demonizing false Palestinian narrative. Director of the PLO’s Arab Relations Anwar Abd Al-Hadi recently referred to Israel as “a state that someone put together”:

PLO Arab Relations Director Anwar Abd Al-Hadi: “Israel has no roots in the ground. Israel is a state that someone put together, a state that the West created. A state that is comprised of people with 90 citizenships. 

Therefore, if Israel will not give the Palestinian people what it deserves, there will be an explosion inside Israel.”

[Official PA TV, Capital of Capitals – Damascus, Nov. 17, 2024]

A covert reference to Israel as a colonial power was made by a PA district governor, who said that “Palestine will be liberated like it was liberated from the yoke of the ancient colonialist powers”:

Salfit District Governor Abdallah Kmeil: “Palestine will be liberated after years of oppression. This land will be liberated like it was liberated in the past from the yoke of the ancient colonialist powers and the empires that occupied Palestine.

 The empires left, the Mongols left, the Romans and the Crusaders left – and Palestine and the Palestinian people remained.”

[Official PA TV, Giants of Endurance, Dec. 27, 2024]

Along the same lines, another PLO official demanded that Jews “return to their origins in Europe and other states from which they came”:

PLO Representative to the UN and International Organizations in Geneva Ibrahim Khreisheh: “Israel is an occupying state, and it needs to end its occupation…

They think according to the religious stories that Greater Israel from the Nile [River] to [the Euphrates River in] Iraq is the land of Greater Israel. Most of them came from various nations and ethnic groups from Europe and other states and stole the Palestinian land. …

Therefore, those who claim their ‘historical right’ [i.e., the Jews] need to return to their origins in Europe and other states from which they came. Palestine will remain for the Palestinians.”

[Official PA TV News, Oct. 12, 2024]

In November 2024, at the Mediterranean Dialogues Conference in Rome, Rawhi Fattouh, the chairman of the Palestinian National Council (the legislative body of the PLO), got up and left a “dialogue meeting” upon seeing that Israeli Parliament Member Yuli Edelstein was also participating, explaining he did so because he refused to “sit with a colonialist who steals lands”:

Chairman of the National Council [Fattouh] cut short the dialogue meeting and resigned from it in protest over the presence of colonialist [Israeli Parliament Member] Yuli Edelstein, who arrived as a representative of the Israeli Parliament…

Fattouh submitted to the participants and the Italian Parliament a protest letter in which he clarified that one should not sit with a colonialist who steals lands, violates international law, and intimidates the native residents…

[Official PA daily Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, Nov. 28, 2024]

The author is a senior analyst at Palestinian Media Watch, where a version of this article was originally published.

The post Exposing the Palestinian Authority’s False Claim That Israel Is an ‘Artificial Colonial Implant’ first appeared on Algemeiner.com.