Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu and Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas agree at least on one point: The “conflict” between Arabs and the Jewish state was not settled in the 1948 War for Independence.

In his Knesset speech Monday night, the Prime Minister said, “This is not a conflict about 1967. This is a conflict about 1948, about the State of Israel’s very existence. You must have noticed that yesterday’s events [“Nakba Day”] did not take place on June 5, the day the Six Day War erupted; they took place on May 15, the day the State of Israel was established.”

In his Monday op-ed in The New York Times, Abbas wrote, “It is important to note that the last time the question of Palestinian statehood took center stage at the General Assembly, the question posed to the international community was whether our homeland should be partitioned into two states. In November 1947, the General Assembly made its recommendation and answered in the affirmative. Shortly thereafter, Zionist forces expelled Palestinian Arabs to ensure a decisive Jewish majority in the future state of Israel, and Arab armies intervened. War and further expulsions ensued.”

Abbas’ skillfully written op-ed implicitly rejected the existence of Israel by stating that the General Assembly partitioned “our homeland,” a phrase that previously has referred to a Jewish state in declarations by the League of Nations and in the Balfour Declaration, among others.

His description of the chain of events in 1947 and 1948 parallels several Muslim and Arab alterations of history and the Bible. His op-ed stated that Zionist forces expelled “Palestinian Arabs” after the United Nations recognition of Israel.

However, Britain still was in control of the country at the time under the Mandate, and Israel, where the Jewish people already were under siege by Arabs, did not establish itself as an independent nation until the following May. Also, the term “Palestinian Arabs” was not invented until years later. The entire country was referred to as Palestine under the British Mandate.

Abbas also tried to establish as a fact that Arab armies “intervened” to stop the alleged efforts to expel Arabs and create a Jewish majority. Virtually every history book outside the Arab world notes that Arab terrorists attacked Jews for decades, most notably the 1929 pogrom in Hevron, where Arabs slaughtered 67 Jews.

The “intervention” was a declaration of war against the existence of a Jewish state, which Arab forces vowed to annihilate.

Abbas wrote that “war and further expulsions” ensued but omitted reminding readers that every war against Israel was launched by Arabs. He did not mention the war drums that seven Arab nations beat until the beginning of the Six Day War in 1967.

Six years later, Egypt, followed by Syria, launched an unprovoked war with a large-scale invasion on Yom Kippur, the holiest Jewish holiday.

Muslim clerics and the Palestinian Authority also have tried to change the Bible, referring to binding of Isaac (Yitzchak) as the “binding of Ishmael.” They also have rejected any Jewish ties to the Temple Mount, which has been subject to an Arab campaign claiming that it was not built by Jews and that the Western Wall is a Muslim holy site.

Similar claims have been made that Rachel’s Tomb, south of Jerusalem and on the road to Efrat, actually was a Muslim holy place, even though Islam was not founded until nearly 2,500 years after the death of Rachel, wife of Jacob (Yaakov).