Chief Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat last week blasted Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for quoting from the Bible in order to draw a connection between Jerusalem and the Jews.

In his Jerusalem Day address to the Knesset marking the 43rd anniversary of the reunification of the city under Israeli control, Netanyahu highlighted the prominent place Jerusalem holds in the Jewish Bible, where it is mentioned no fewer than 850 times (including the times the city is referred to as "Zion").

A day later, Erekat told Reuters that he found it "distasteful, this use of religion to incite hatred and fear."

Erekat insisted that the eastern half of Jerusalem is "an occupied Palestinian town" that must be surrendered by Israel.

The Palestinians have worked hard over the past few decades to erase the Jews' millennia-old history in Jerusalem, including claims that there never was a Jewish temple atop the Temple Mount and that Jesus was in fact a Palestinian Arab.