Dozens of Israeli settlers have forced their way into the flashpoint Al-Aqsa Mosque complex

thousands of settlers have been carrying out provocative tours of the mosque complex...

Israeli settlers stormed the complex on Wednesday...and attempted to perform “Talmudic rituals”

Although Arabic is related to Canaanite languages, the connection is more distant. Canaanite languages are grouped together with Aramaic and Amorite to form a higher level Semitic subfamily known as Northwest Semitic. Then, further back in time, this grouping in its turn was connected to Arabic in a subfamily known as Central Semitic.

Historical linguists have dated the separation of Arabic from Northwest Semitic around a thousand years earlier than the period when the Canaanite languages diverged from each other. This is not consistent with Ishmael being the father of the Arabs, for Arabic goes back to a much early branch of the Semitic family than the divisions between the the members of Abraham's family.

Over time, Arabic speakers displaced some of earlier Canaanite nations, including the Moabites and the Edomites, who had dwelled around Arabah rift valley and the Dead Sea. The Edomites were pushed to the north, into the southern edge of Judea, which became known known in Greek as Idumea. It seems that the Ishmaelites had been displaced centuries earlier.

Of late, the Palestinian leadership has been repeating the theme that the Palestinians are descended from the Canaanites. Because it keeps reiterating this narrative, there is a concern that some in the West will fall for it.

The purpose of the “Canaanite” narrative, however, is not to shed light on the Palestinians’ real ancestry, but to deny the Jews’ narrative. Why the Canaanites? Because they were in the country before the Israelite tribes were and thus have precedence. According to Nabil Shaath, Jewish history is but a “potpourri of legends and fabrications.” The Canaanite narrative cannot promote reconciliation and compromise but only the destruction of the Israeli-Jewish narrative, according to the same principle by which the various communities are now destroying each other in Syria.

Hence, it is important to clarify how the Palestinians themselves view their own ancestry. Indeed, not a single Palestinian tribe identifies its roots in Canaan; instead, they all see themselves as proud Arabs descended from the most notable Arab tribes of the Hejaz, today’s Iraq, or Yemen. Even the Kanaan family of Nablus locates its origins in Syria.

Some families are Kurdish or Egyptian, and in Mount Hebron, there are traditions about Jewish origins.

This study does not deny the right of the Palestinian families as a whole to define themselves as a Palestinian people. It would be better, however, if the Palestinian leadership were to choose a positive and constructive narrative and not a baseless one that is intended to negate that of the other.