The Palestinian Authority (PA) recently said that all of Jerusalem, including the Western Wall, has never been used as a place of worship throughout history by anyone besides Muslims “until the ominous Balfour Declaration was issued in 1917.
” This directly contradicts a myriad of Jewish and non-Jewish historical sources that indicate otherwise.
PA Minister of Religious Affairs Mahmoud Al-Habbash said Jerusalem and the Western Wall are “the sole right of Palestinians,” according to Palestinian Media Watch, in response to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s recent statement regarding Jerusalem’s 3,000-year Jewish history during Hanukkah last month. Al-Habbash called Netanyahu’s words “worthless from a religious, historical, or legal point of view.”
The Western Wall is the last remnant of the Second Jewish Temple, destroyed by the Romans in 70 CE. The famous Jewish historian from that era, Josephus Flavius, who lived in Jerusalem, documented the destruction of the city and wrote extensively about the history of Jews in the region during the Antiquities.
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