My Way News - Muslim cleric unrepentant about upstaging pope
AP reports: "Tamimi took the podium just before the last speaker of the evening was about to come up. Speaking in Arabic, he welcomed the pope to Jerusalem, 'the eternal political, national and spiritual capital of Palestine.'"

Comment: Well, that's a shame, but I guess it's to be expected that the pope's PR trip will be used for the PR purposes of all sides. So, Jerusalem is the capital of Palestine? If we accept that Palestine was the name of the Jewish homeland in the pre-modern era, then yes, we can say that Jerusalem was an important Palestinian city under the Roman Empire, but the capital of the province of Palestine under the Roman Empire was Caesarea (well, one of them, but that gets complicated) and that the Jews remained the true Palestinians until the word Palestinian was co-opted by Arabs (primarily Egyptian and Jordanian nationals and their descendants) in the 20th Century who refused to accept the original UN mandated two-state solution or free citizenship in the new state of Israel after it was established and successfully defended from Arab attack. No one said that Egypt or Jordan could not repatriate their nationals after the war, they could have done that, but they chose not to. No one said that Lebanon had to keep Palestinian refugees in camps, they could have given them citizenship and given them freedom, they chose not to. The modern Palestinians were created by Arab states to make war against Israel, and then the international community sanctioned the idea of the Palestinians, elevating their status in the peace talks, just so Israel would have someone to negotiate with. So a people that never existed in history (no great kings, no great philosophers or poets, no historical battles hundreds of years ago) suddenly bursts onto the scene and declare that Jerusalem is their capital? Since when?