"When Herzl came to Palestine, he found in it a people, culture and progress, and said: 'How can the Jews immigrate here? How can the state of the Jews be established here?'" Habbash said in a speech, broadcast on PA TV on November 1. "'There is a people here. We want a land without a people."'Therefore, we, and Britain and the Western states must act to empty Palestine of its residents, its people and throw them into the desert... And we can take them to Africa... so that the wild animals will eat them and we will be rid of the so-called Palestinian people, so that Palestine will become a land without a people for a people without a land.’”
He continued: “Foreign people were brought [here] who have no connection to this land. Neither historically nor religiously. They were… planted… like thorns… Balfour did not love the Jews. He was – [like those] called antisemites… He… wanted to be rid of the Jews. [Therefore] he issued this [Balfour Declaration]."In recent months, Palestinian Media Watch recorded other examples of Palestinian academics appearing on official PA TV, claiming that there was no evidence of Jewish life in Israel before 1948.
Arthur Balfour and Theodor Herzl are considered two major figures in the history of Zionism. Herzl was a Jewish journalist from Austro-Hungary; a playwright, political activist and writer who was the father of modern Political Zionism. He wrote the first blueprint of the Zionist movement, Der Judenstaat (The Jewish State), and Altneuland (The Old New Land).
Balfour was a former British prime minister and foreign secretary, who famously issued the Balfour Declaration in 1917, announcing support for the establishment of a "national home for the Jewish people" in Palestine (then under Ottoman rule).
The Balfour Declaration served as the important document for the Zionist movement, providing the framework for a Jewish state after the onset of the British Mandate in Palestine following World War I.