The Zionist movement, as noted in a previous article, claimed that Palestine, which it called the “Land of Israel”, is the legitimate right of the Jews, according to its claim that they established their kingdoms and temples there. Therefore, this movement presents evidence of appropriation of Jerusalem in particular and Palestine in general.
It always seeks to highlight the Jewish religious and national association of the land, while in return it seeks to diminish the importance and value of the historical, religious, and national Arab Muslim League of Jerusalem and Palestine. It ignores the Arab and Palestinian historical narrative, and this disregard is done by a deliberate thought.
Hence, we can explain the reason for what happened in 1948 in terms of demolitions and destruction of entire Palestinian villages and towns, and what happened to mosques and Islamic religious sites in particular with the aim of concealing landmarks that would expose the deliberate disregard to which we referred earlier. The first head of the enemy government systematically erased all the Arab evidence that existed in Palestine, especially the Islamic past.
In July 2007, an investigation appeared in the Hebrew newspaper Haaretz, in which it was noted that the Jewish army command had pursued a “deliberate policy aimed at destroying mosques.” This is within the scope of the policy of erasing Arab villages, which remained empty after the Nakba in 1948, and the accompanying ethnic cleansing.
The investigation stated that of the 160 mosques that existed in Palestinian villages, only 40 remained, with the real numbers destroyed being much higher. That destruction is deliberate.
Today, in its war on Gaza 2023-2024, the army of the occupation state completely destroyed about 117 mosques and 208 partially. The numbers increase as the war and destruction age. Among the mosques targeted by barbaric aircraft are historical mosques such as the Omari Mosque, which dates back to 1,400 years, which is the oldest and oldest mosque in Gaza City.
It also destroyed the Mosque of the Rightly-Guided Caliphs, the Sheikh Shaaban Mosque and many others, all this within deliberate operations with the aim of erasing any Islamic religious past in the land of Palestine and erasing the history and civilization of this land in addition to obliterating the Palestinian and Arab-Islamic identity. Hence, the occupying Power not only practices cleansing of human beings, but also seeks to cleanse everything related to the Arabism of Palestine.