The Palestinian Authority (PA) has stepped up its rhetoric against Jewish rights and heritage to the Temple Mount, Palestinian Media Watch reports Wednesday – now labelling Israel’s presence at Judaism’s holiest site as an “invasion.”

“Indeed, the Israeli establishment insists on carrying out its evil plan to destroy the Al-Aqsa Mosque and establish the alleged Temple,” PA Minister of Religious Affairs, Sheikh Yusuf Ida’is, stated last month. “This is [done] by establishing facts on the ground, for the Muslims, so they will accept the inevitability of the situation.”

“Every month there are invasions (i.e., visits by Jews to the Temple Mount),” he continued. “Last month, there were more than 184 invasions into places of worship, and especially into the blessed Al-Aqsa Mosque [plaza] (i.e., the Temple Mount), as the Israeli establishment allows the herds of settlers to enter the blessed Al-Aqsa Mosque [plaza] daily – which provokes the feelings of Muslims – under protection of the Israeli occupation police.”

Both the PA and its ruling party, Chairman Mahmoud Abbas’s Fatah, have also posted a string of cartoons depicting Israel destroying the Al-Aqsa Mosque. 

In one cartoon, an Israeli soldier is cutting the dome off the Dome of the Rock.

In the other, Israeli PM Netanyahu is digging up the foundation of Al-Aqsa Mosque with a bulldozer.

In addition, the below cartoon posted by Fatah shows a Jew trying to destroy the Al-Aqsa Mosque and warns of religious war. The Jew in the cartoon has the word “excavations” written on his suit. The PA adamantly opposes excavations near the Temple Mount and in the City of David because the many archaeological finds in those areas related to Jewish history expose the falsehood of PA claims that Jews never lived in Jerusalem and that there never was a Jewish Temple. The PA therefore charges that the excavations are intended to cause the Mosque to collapse.

The Jordanian Waqf retains de facto control of the Mount even since its liberation in the 1967 Six Day War, and it has forbidden Jews from praying at the site despite Israeli law ensuring freedom of worship – a fact the PA has exploited.

Arabs have repeatedly tried to erase the Jewish nature of the site, where the First and Second Temples stood, by destroying ancient Jewish artifacts and building illegally.

In its most recent historical revision, PA literature published reviews from “experts” who claimed that the Holy Temples were not Jewish, but Roman buildings.