Palestinian professor: “We are the owners of this land,” Israel “steals everything testifying to the [historical] Palestinian presence”

Official PA TV host: "They [Israel] are trying to attribute the [Shuqba Cave] site to them."

Shuqba local village council head Adnan Shalash: "This is always the Israeli narrative according to which the entire place belongs to them." ...

History professor Rasem Mtawa: "It is necessary that the [Palestinian] generations who live and exist today know the cultural heritage of the Palestinian cause, our heritage, our culture that is in these sites, so that we will prove to the world that the origin in this land is not the Zionist occupation. This [Palestinian] culture exists and is represented by the Palestinian man. Its existence is represented by the fig trees, olive trees, and wheat that exist on the entire land of Palestine... The need to incorporate this culture into the Palestinian [history] books stems from the fact that our generations need to know that we are the owners of this land...The occupation is trying to steal everything Palestinian, trying to steal the name, trying to steal the history, trying to steal everything that testifies to the [historical] Palestinian presence."

[Official PA TV, Memory Under Threat, June 4, 2025]

The Shuqba Cave is in Wadi Natuf in the West Bank. Both the cave and the wadi have been nominated as a tentative UNESCO World Heritage Site. 

Natufian culture was a pre-agricultural society in the Levant region around 12,500 to 9,500 BC.

The Palestinians have no history prior to the modern period, and therefore no connection to Natufian culture either.