Was there ever a Palestinian 'nation'?

Palestinians lack true national identity as theirs mostly characterized by hatred towards Israel

The growing political and cultural rift between the Arabs of the Gaza Strip and those residing in Judea and Samaria has stirred debate about the possibility of establishing two separate political entities and the future of Palestinian nationalism in general. Yet perhaps we should be asking whether there ever really was a Palestinian "nation"?

In many places in the world, arbitrary borders set by colonialist powers define a "nation" that do not exist in practice. Is there such thing as a Sudanese "nation" or Iraqi "nation"? Or are we talking about a collection of tribes, groups, and even nations possessing vastly different ways of life, religions, and values that has been gathered together by chance and who are paying a bloody price for this to this very day?

The borders of British Mandatory Palestine too were set, just like the case with its neighbors, on the basis of colonial interests. In many areas, the border was drawn in a rather random manner. Had it been performed a little differently, would the Arabs of Marjayoun in southern Lebanon become Palestinian? Would the Arabs of Tarshiha in the Galilee be Lebanese? Are residents of Trans-Jordan, which was initially part of Mandatory Palestine and a few years later became the Kingdom of Jordan, Palestinian or Jordanian?

During the less than 30 years of the existence of this Mandate, from which the Palestinians draw their name, no significant indications were to be found of a united national identity of their own. The leader of Mandate Arabs was the Mufti Haj Amin al-Husseini, who viewed himself as a pan-Arabic leader, imposed his rule through the persecution and assassination of his rivals, and headed a loose alliance of clans, tribes, and local interests that were mostly united by hatred towards the Jews, and to a lesser extent towards the British.

Hence, in the bloody clashes of 1936-1939, where the Arabs seemingly fought the British (and of course massacred the Jews,) more people were killed in intra-Arab violence than at the hands of the British. Similarly, in 1947-1949, the Arabs fought against the establishment of the Jewish state in a disorganized and separate manner, in various locations, such as the Jerusalem mountains, the Galilee, Jaffa, and so forth.

Following the Mandate's end, it is even more difficult to find a united national activity or perception, aside from the hatred of Israel. Under Egyptian rule in Gaza and Jordanian rule in Judea and Samaria, there were neither substantial cultural development attempts nor national activity or a demand for the establishment of a state in those areas. The only objective that aroused support and stirred activity - and saw the establishment of Fatah and PLO to that end - was the establishment of an Arab country in place of Israel.

After 1967, the unification under Israeli rule created an illusion of national identity. Yet the characteristics of Arafat's leadership replicated those of the Mufti - one-man rule focused on hostility to Israel, and based on regional and clan calculations alongside the persecution and assassination of rivals.

Arafat's death and Israel's withdrawal from Arab population centers revealed that forced unification and hostility towards Israel are apparently the only characteristics of the Palestinian "nation." Perhaps when a state existing within superficial borders has been in place for a long period of time, there is a point in maintaining it without genuine national identity. Yet Mandatory Palestine ceased to exist about 60 years ago and hatred towards Israel is no substitute for national identity.

This conclusion should prompt us to ask new questions regarding the conflict's essence, ways of addressing it, and possible objectives. ---------- Dr Haivry is a fellow at the Shalem Center's Institute for Philosophy, Politics, and Religion

Not quite.
The mandate for Palestine (a word coined by the Romans)was given to Great Britain.
The 78% East of the Jordan river was given the King Abdullah and called the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan.
The majority of transient Arabs residing there (non-Hashemites)are what is called Palestinian.

The remainder of the land, West of the Jordan was given to the Jews, and is called Israel.
Jews who resided in the mandate prior to the declaration of the State of Israel, held I.D.cards and British Passports showing them to be Palestinian. They fought in the Jewish Legion with the British Army, in Europe, and flew in the RAF with the shoulder flash “Palestine”.
They also fought the British policy of excluding Jews escaping from the Nazis from seeking a place of survival in the Mandate. It is noteworthy that at the height of WWII, when every resource was needed to combat the Germans, the British Med fleet dedicated one third of it's naval resources to prevent Jewish immigration from Nazi controlled Europe to Palestine, where they would have been welcomed by the Jews in the 22% remainder of the mandate governed by the Brits allegedly for the Jews. Thankfully the Jews of Palestine fought the repressive and bigoted policies of Britain as strongly as they did the Germans. I have two still surviving relatives who retain those documents as souvenirs, including a couple of Brit “Gongs”(medals). As far as I am aware there were NO Arabs in the RAF fighting the Nazis, nor in the Army. Maybe because the Mufti Haj Amin al Hussaini was a personal pal of Hitler, and an adviser.
On my last visit we laughed at the “Palestinians” who had no interest in exploding themselves.

Was there ever a Palestinian 'notion'?
No.
The Jews took no one's land.
As the most visible Arab-American critic of Yasser Arafat and the phony"Palestinian" agenda, I get a lot of hate mail. I've even received more than my share of death threats.
Most of those who attack me at least those who bother to get beyond the four-letter words and insults say I just don't understand or have sympathy for these poor Arabs who were displaced, chased out of their homes and turned into refugees by the Israelis.
Let me state this plainly and clearly: The Jews in Israel took no one's land. When Mark Twain visited the Holy Land in the 19th century, he was greatly disappointed. He didn't see any people. He referred to it as a vast wasteland. The land we now know as Israel was practically deserted.
By the beginning of the 20th century, that began to change. Jews from all over the world began to return to their ancestral homeland the Promised Land Moses and Joshua had conquered millennia earlier, Christians and Jews believe, on the direct orders of God.
That's not to say there wasn't always a strong Jewish presence in the land particularly in and around Jerusalem. In 1854, according to a report in the New York Tribune, Jews constituted two-thirds of the population of that holy city. The source for that statistic? A journalist on assignment in the Middle East that year for the Tribune. His name was Karl Marx. Yes, that Karl Marx.
A travel guide to Palestine and Syria, published in 1906 by Karl Baedeker, illustrates the fact that, even when the Islamic Ottoman Empire ruled the region, the Muslim population in Jerusalem was minimal. The book estimates the total population of the city at 60,000, of whom 7,000 were Muslims, 13,000 were Christians and 40,000 were Jews. "The number of Jews has greatly risen in the last few decades, in spite of the fact that they are forbidden to immigrate or to possess landed property," the book states. Even though the Jews were persecuted, still they came to Jerusalem and represented the overwhelming majority of the population as early as 1906.
And even though Muslims today claim Jerusalem as the third holiest site in Islam, when the city was under Islamic rule, they had little interest in it.
As the Jews came, drained the swamps and made the deserts bloom, something interesting began to happen. Arabs followed. I don't blame them. They had good reason to come. They came for jobs. They came for prosperity. They came for freedom. And they came in large numbers. Winston Churchill observed in 1939: "So far from being persecuted, the Arabs have crowded into the country and multiplied till their population has increased more than even all world Jewry could lift up the Jewish population." Then came 1948 and the great partition. The United Nations proposed the creation of two states in the region one Jewish, one Arab. The Jews accepted it gratefully. The Arabs rejected it with a vengeance and declared war.
Arab leaders urged Arabs to leave the area so they would not be caught in the crossfire. They could return to their homes, they were told, after Israel was crushed and the Jews destroyed.[/b]
It didn't work out that way.
By most counts, several hundred thousand Arabs were displaced by this war not by Israeli aggression, not by some Jewish real-estate grab, not by Israeli expansionism.
In fact, there are many historical records showing the Jews urged the Arabs to stay and live with them in peace. But, tragically, they chose to leave. Fifty-four years [now 60 years] later, the sons and daughters and grandsons and granddaughters of those refugees are all-too-often still living in refugee camps -- not because of Israeli intransigence, but because they are misused as a political tool of the Arab powers.
Those poor unfortunates could be settled in a week by the rich Arab oil states that control 99.9 percent of the Middle East landmass, but they are kept as virtual prisoners, filled with misplaced hatred for Jews and armed as suicide martyrs by the Arab power brokers.
This is the modern real history of the Arab-Israeli conflict. At no time did the Jews uproot Arab families from their homes. When there were title deeds to be purchased, they bought them at inflated prices. When there were not, they worked the land so they could have a place to live without the persecution they faced throughout the world.

It's a great big lie that the Israelis displaced anyone; one of a series of lies and myths that have the world on the verge of committing yet another great injustice to the Jews.

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