The PA’s Chief Islamic Judge and the Chairman of the Palestinian National Council harshly condemned Speaker Johnson’s visit to Hebron and Ariel, where U.S. Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee accompanied him. They labeled the visit a “crime,” an “invasion,” and a “dangerous provocation,” once again clarifying their position: rejection of the very existence of the Jewish People in their homeland.
The Regavim Movement released a statement in response:
Today’s inflammatory statements were published and distributed by the PA’s official news agency, WAFA, indicating this is official policy, not fringe opinion.This is not just rhetoric – it’s the Palestinian Authority’s official diplomatic agenda: to create a state without Jews, without the Cave of the Patriarchs, without a past and without a future.
PA Chief Judge Sheikh Mahmoud Al-Habbash, advisor to Mahmoud Abbas on religious affairs, called the Speaker’s visit an “invasion” and “break-in,” accompanied, in his words, “by colonialist terror gangs.” He declared the Cave of the Patriarchs to be a “purely Muslim site, to which others have no right, according to UNESCO decisions.”
The purchase of Hebron by Abraham is described in detail in Genesis.
So the field of Ephron, which was in Machpelah, which was before Mamre, the field, and the cave which was therein, and all the trees that were in the field, that were in all the border thereof round about, were made sure, unto Avraham for a possession in the presence of the children of Heth, before all that went in at the gate of his city. Genesis 23:17-18
Al-Habbash also condemned Speaker Johnson’s visit to Ariel in Samaria, claiming it was built “on land belonging to Palestinian civilians,” and rejected Johnson’s statement that Judea and Samaria are part of the State of Israel.
The head of the Palestinian National Council, Rawhi Fattouh, joined the attacks, calling the visit to the Cave of the Patriarchs a “criminal act under international law” and accused the U.S. of “interfering in Palestinian affairs and its holy sites.”
To restate the obvious: The Palestinian Authority—and the UN’s Office for Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA)—any Jewish presence at holy sites in Jerusalem, Judea and Samaria, including the Temple Mount, the Cave of the Patriarchs and Joseph’s Tomb, is categorized as “settler violence.” Speaker Johnson’s visit, like visits by any other non-Muslims, will undoubtedly be included in OCHA’s distorted, inaccurate, and unsubstantiated database, maintained in cooperation with the PA. This database was exposed in Regavim’s recent report, False Flags, Real Agendas, as a systematic, self-sustaining mechanism for disinformation, demonization and delegitimization of the State of Israel as a whole: False reports, provided by the Palestinian Authority and a network of foreign-funded anti-Israel organizations operating in Judea and Samaria, are collected by OCHA, republished as “facts,” and used to fuel targeted international campaigns against Israel, the IDF and Jewish communities in Judea and Samaria.
Naomi Kahn, Director of Regavim’s International Division:
“The PA’s inflammatory rhetoric once again proves that there is no partner for peace and no room for illusions. In the PA’s eyes, visits – by Jews and even by non-Jews – to the burial site of Abraham and Sarah, Isaac and Rebecca, Jacob and Leah are a ‘crime’ worthy of punishment. These are not fringe voices – this is the official policy of a leadership still granted legitimacy by the West. As long as the world continues to treat this regime as legitimate, it is complicit in incitement, denial of Jewish history, and the furtherance of the Palestinian vision of the future of the Holy Land: without Jews, without Christians, without a past, and without a future.”
