I reported Rajoub's official denial on Sunday morning. And today he "clarified" even more to his Arab critics, saying that he literally said that the Wall should be under Jewish "religious supervision."
The Hebrew phrase he used, ריבונות יהודית, unambiguously means "Jewish sovereignty."
Rajoub spun what he said on Palestinian TV on Monday evening, after furious blowback for his alleged "acceptance of Israeli sovereignty over the Wailing Wall." He said that the Israeli TV presenter asked him: Do you accept Israeli sovereignty over the Wailing Wall? "I told her 'no way' and I 'cannot.'"
Yet even after these explicit denials, most of the Israeli media has not reported on it. Haaretz today even has a sarcastic op-ed deriding those who think that Palestinian leaders are anything but flexible and wonderful based wholly on Rajoub's initial, purposefully ambiguous remarks meant to make himself look moderate:
There’s no choice: We have to liquidate Jibril Rajoub. He’s continuing to spout off about peace, and we must put an end to it.
In an interview Saturday night with Channel 2 television’s “Meet the Press,” he threw a bombshell. “We understand that the Western Wall ... is sacred to the Jews and ultimately it has to remain under Jewish sovereignty,” he said. “There is no argument over this.”The Fatah Seventh Congress said nothing about "two states for two peoples." It is another bald-faced lie by Rajoub that Haaretz fact checkers don't want to check because it fits in with their biases of only Israeli officials lying.
Then, to prove just how dangerous, subversive and scheming he is, Rajoub added that his Fatah party’s Seventh General Congress, which took place about six months ago, had decided “the solution to the conflict is two states for two peoples, and resistance to the occupation will be nonviolent.” Why nonviolent, for heaven’s sake? Let them blow up buses, so we can bomb them in return.
In this case, it isn't only Haaretz clinging to the false narrative of a moderate Jibril Rajoub. Virtually all of Israel's mainstream media has not mentioned his about-face that occurred within a day of his original interview.
Religious newspaper Hamodia mentions Rajoub's denial in English and Yoni Ben-Menachem on News1 reports on Rajoub's habit of saying one thing in Hebrew/English and another in Arabic, noting his many incendiary statements made over the years. That was all I could find. Most of Israeli media simply chose to ignore Rajoub's heated denial of his supposedly moderate statement.