Arabs, Turks, Beduin and Druze. Palestinian is a regional geographic moniker, like "New Englander" which includes all the people living there. It was not an ethnic or national identifier.
Under what conditions would it be correct to say "There were no "New Englanders" then"?
Under what conditions would it be correct to say "There were no "Palestinians" then"?
Palestine is a historical region of southwest Asia at the eastern end of the Mediterranean Sea and roughly coextensive with modern Israel and the West Bank. Occupied since prehistoric times, it has been ruled by Hebrews, Egyptians, Romans, Byzantines, Arabs, and Turks.
The earliest known inhabitants of Palestine were of the same group as the Neanderthal inhabitants of Europe. By the 4th millennium B.C. Palestine was inhabited by herders and farmers. It was in the 3d millennium that most of the towns known in historical times came into existence. They became centers of trade for Egyptian and Babylonian goods. During the 2d millennium, Palestine was ruled by the Hyksos and by the Egyptians. Toward the end of this period Moses led the Hebrew people out of Egypt, across the Sinai, and into Palestine.
In the Bible, Palestine is called Canaan before the invasion of Joshua. Palestine is the Holy Land of Jews, having been promised to them by God; of Christians because it was the scene of Jesus' life; and of Muslims because they consider Islam to be the heir of Judaism and Christianity and because Jerusalem is the site, according to Muslim tradition, of Muhammad's ascent to heaven.
The Holy Land derives its special character from being a place of pilgrimage. Shrines, shared in common by several religions, cluster most numerously in and about Jerusalem, Bethlehem, Nazareth, and Hebron.
To know the history of Palestine is to know the history of the world. It is sad that there are uninformed people who dismiss the peoples of that land by claiming they never existed. As a a person from "Dixie" might say to those uninformed people; "you can put your boots in the oven but that won't make'em biscuits", unless of course one asserts that Dixie never existed.