Ramallah, May 20 - Palestinian officials accused Israel today of using antibiotics to kill locally occurring bacteria whose genetic sequence proves that Palestinians are directly descended from the most ancient forms of life in the contested land.Negotiator Saeb Erekat leveled the charges at a press conference Tuesday afternoon, taking up a theme he has revisited a number of times. Last year Erekat claimed Palestinians were descended from the Canaanites, apparently in an effort to forge a link to pre-Israelite civilizations, thereby establishing a claim that historically precedes the Jewish one, and he has previously invoked the Natufians, an even more ancient group that preceded even the Canaanites. The statement linking Palestinians to the first living organisms is likely a similar effort to outflank potential efforts to question the pedigree of the Palestinian claim.
"Israel is using Teva-manufactured pharmaceuticals to destroy the organisms carrying the DNA which proves Palestinian ancestry to the exclusion of the spurious Jewish claim," asserted Erekat, whose colleagues in the Jerusalem Waqf are overseeing excavation and renovation of the Temple Mount specifically to remove archaeological evidence of the Jewish temples that stood there. "We Palestinians are the proud descendant of the first microorganisms to ooze from the primordial reaches of prehistory in this land. No one has the right to dispute this."
For decades, Israelis have been using antibacterial agents to destroy such microorganisms, often millions at a time. "The massacre of our genetic cousins continues apace, and the cruelty of the Zionist oppressor usurpers knows no bounds. Even as we speak, countless bacterial brethren of the Palestinian people - brethren whose incontrovertible link to us is encoded in prokaryotic DNA - are slaughtered at the cruel hands of Israeli disinfectants, medications, antiseptics, detergents, gastric acids, and leukocytes," he said. "These killings take place with the nonchalance we have come to expect from the arrogant Zionists - on toilet seats, on human skin, in the bloodstream - everywhere. No location is sacred enough, or off limits, for the Zionists to exercise their micro-ethnic cleansing."
"Having failed to successfully prosecute genocide against us, the Zionists seek to eliminate the evidence that we were, in fact, here first," continued Erekat, whose Bedouin ancestors are documented as migrating to the land in the nineteenth century.
Other Palestinian officials echoed the charges, and promised to take action on the international stage. "We have already applied to UNESCO to have these local bacteria declared a World Heritage Organism," said Nabil Abu Rudeineh. "The impunity with which Israel acts in this regard must be stopped."
In contrast, leaders of the Hamas movement blasted Erekat. "The heresy inherent in his remarks is intolerable," said Darween Wasaful, a spokesman for the organization. "Everyone knows humanity was specially created by Allah from clay, and that the sun orbits the Earth."