A senior Palestinian official Monday condemned the participation of US envoys in the unveiling of an archaeological site in East Jerusalem and scoffed at the “fake” account of Jewish history attributed to the subterranean road.This is a person regarded as a "moderate." This is a person that was a lead negotiator for, ahem, "peace."
Saeb Erekat said he believed the tunnel was a project being used by Israeli right-wingers to further Israel’s claim on East Jerusalem and advance settlement growth there.
“It has nothing to do with religion, it is fake,” he told journalists at his office in Ramallah in the West Bank.
He cited reports by two Israeli NGOs questioning the archaeological methods used.
One of the organizations, Peace Now, also says cracks emerged in multiple houses in Silwan after the digging began.
Erekat said: “It’s a settlement project. It’s based on a lie that has nothing to do with history."
And this is a person who is actually more reasonable than most other Palestinian leaders!
"Questioning archaeological methods" does not mean that the road discovered that leads up to the Temple Mount is not real. It was clearly used by hundreds of thousands of Jewish pilgrims to visit the Second Temple. No archaeologist in the world denies this.
But Saeb Erekat does.
Which means that (yet again) Erekat is proven to be a liar. You literally cannot believe a word he says.
The Western media, unfortunately, doesn't hold him to the same standards that any Western politician would be held to when they are shown to be knowingly lying. On the contrary, they are eager to interview him. The Forward published an op-ed from this liar just this week (claiming that the US supports "Greater Israel" based on the Bahrain workshop that didn't talk about politics or borders at all.)
A number of years ago, Erekat issued a quote referring to Israel's prime minister, with a saying I never heard and couldn't find anywhere else. Perhaps it is an Arabic saying, but it is clearly Saeb Erakat's personal motto:
“There’s a saying that if you don’t stop a man who is lying after 24 hours, the lies turn into facts."
Who can stop Erekat's lies? Only the media and politicians, but they refuse to. He has been proven a liar too many times to count - claiming a "massacre" in Jenin*, claiming that Israel killed nearly 12,000 civilians in Gaza in 2014, claiming his family was in "Palestine" for 9000 years, on and on.
That's how his lies become facts.
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*Electronic Intifada published a letter in the Economist in 2002 claiming that Erekat never used the word "massacre" in describing Jenin. Yet the Irish Times quoted him directly:
"How many civilians must be killed to speak of a massacre?" asked Mr Erakat. "The Israeli massacre in Jenin's refugee camp clearly happened and this is a war crime and crimes against humanity also took place".He also used that word on CNN.
Mr Erakat had accused Israel during the battle of killing up to 500 people in Jenin, a figure the UN report dismissed, saying 52 Palestinians and 23 Israeli soldiers died in the fighting.
"The UN should have used the word "massacre" or "war crime", especially because the Jenin's camp is managed by the UN," Erakat said.