February 6, 2019
(Revised 6/25/21)

Down The Memory Hole: "We're Not Palestinians, We're Syrians!" - AD 1919; “We’re Not Syrians, We’re Palestinians!” - AD 1948 "The Palestinian people does not exist. The creation of a Palestinian state is only a means for continuing our struggle against the state of Israel for our Arab unity. In reality today there is no difference between Jordanians, Palestinians, Syrians and Lebanese. Only for political and tactical reasons do we speak today about the existence of a Palestinian people, since Arab national interests demand that we posit the existence of a distinct "Palestinian people" to oppose Zionism. Yes, the existence of a separate Palestinian identity exists only for tactical reasons, Jordan, which is a sovereign state with defined borders, cannot raise claims to Haifa and Jaffa, while as a Palestinian, I can undoubtedly demand Haifa, Jaffa, Beer-Sheva and Jerusalem. However, the moment we reclaim our right to all of Palestine, we will not wait even a minute to unite Palestine and Jordan." — PLO official Zahir Muhsein, interview with Dutch newspaper Trouw, March 31, 1977.

“Palestinian Arabs never viewed themselves as having a separate identity. When the First Congress of Muslim/Christian Associations met in Jerusalem in February 1919 to choose Palestinian representatives for the Paris Peace Conference, the following resolution was adopted: ‘We consider Palestine as part of Arab Syria, as it has never been separated from it at any time. We are connected with it by national, religious, linguistic, natural, economic and geographical bonds.’

The representative of the Arab Higher Committee to the United Nations submitted a statement to the General Assembly in May 1947 that said, "Palestine was part of the Province of Syria" and that, "politically, the Arabs of Palestine were not independent in the sense of forming a separate political entity." A few years later, Ahmed Shuqeiri, later the chairman of the PLO, told the United Nations Security Council, "It is common knowledge that Palestine is nothing but southern Syria."

PLO official Zahir Muhsein in 1977 and Arabs living in Palestine in 1919 admitted their nationality is not Palestinian but Syrian, or southeast Syria - today's Jordan - the Palestinian nationality being the newly created reviled nationality created for the Jewish state!

Notice too that Ottoman Palestine - Filistin - reached all the way up to Beirut (see map below), but Arab governments and the misnamed 'Palestinians' never talk about occupied southern Lebanon!

History of Palestine:

After the Second Jewish Revolt in 135 AD Emperor Hadrian renamed the whole area (Judea, Galilee and Syria) 'Syria Palæstina', Palæstina the Latin for Philistine. Rome renamed the Jewish territories of Judea and Galilee after classical Israel's hated enemies--the Philistines , which is why in 1948 Jews in Palestine renamed their nation Israel.

Now, when the Ottoman Empire lost its colonies in the Middle East in 1918, it was up to the British and French to apportion the territories between the various religious/ethnic groups living there. The "Arabs" were provided six nations: (1) a newly re-constituted Syria; (2) Iraq; (3) Lebanon; (4) Jordan, created from Ottoman southern Syria; (5) Jabal al Druze; and (6) The Alawite State. The Jews of the Middle East were given the territory within Syria that was called Palestine, Palestine being a non-administrative area of land under the Ottomans, like Central Park in New York City. The territory of Palestine under the Ottomans included the following administrative provinces: The Mutasarrifiyet of Jerusalem and the southern half of the Vilayet of Lebanon, ending just south of Beirut...

The Mutasarrifiyet of Jerusalem and the Vilayet of Beirut (Lebanon)…

…and subdivisions for the Mutasarrifiyet of Jerusalem and the Vilayet of Lebanon...

Historical Palestine under the Turks was a stretch of area that includes today's Israel and southern Lebanon, ending just outside Beirut, as the first map illustrates. It had no political administrative significance under the Turks, nor any relationship to a specific people named after it. The term Palestine is akin to Appalachia in the United States that encompasses several states and has no political administrative apparatus nor specific ethnic habitation. That's why in 1918 there were no persons called ‘Palestinian’. Those who lived in Palestine just after World War I ended called themselves Syrian. It wasn't until after Israel became a State in May 1948 that Arab governments changed the nationality of Palestine Mandate Arabs from Syrian to Palestinian, where the Palestinians would now serve as an Arab government's proxy weapon against Israel. All that was needed to operationalize the new Arab governments' strategy was to get Israel to acquire the West Bank and Gaza (which Israel allowed to slip away into the Arab orbit in the 1948-1949 war, since holding onto those territories would destroy Israel electorally), which was accomplished by what the history books call the Six-Day War. Now you know why the Egyptian Army moved across the demilitarized Sinai all the way up to Israel's border and then inexplicably stopped dead in its tracks.

In the modern parlance of the defunct nationality, the Palestinian nationality belongs to the Israeli people to do with as the Knesset sees fit. Any claim to the Palestinian nationality involves approval by the Knesset, and such approval would entail Israeli citizens' choice to revert back to the defunct Palestinian nationality that was created for the Jewish Homeland by the League of Nations in 1923. Needles to say, this will never happen.

Soon the ‘Palestinians’ will be told by their masters within Arab governments to abandon the ‘two-state option’ and call for a ‘one state option’ with Israel, effectively checkmating the survival of the Jewish state. The ‘Palestinians’ will bolster their demand for inclusion of Israeli citizenship by ‘remembering’ that they are, in fact, Israeli citizens (which they are), since the West Bank and Gaza were territories included under the still operational Palestine Mandate.


ADDENDUM

If the distinct 'Palestinian People' existed pre-World War I, then the Encylopaedia Britannica would list them, so let's take a look at the 1910 Encylopaedia Britannica.

The Druze are mentioned under their own heading, Volume 8 (p. 603). The Alawites (Nosairis) are mentioned under the heading Syria, Volume 26 (p. 307). Palestinian is neither to be found listed under such a heading nor the heading for Palestine, Volume 20 (p. 604), and not listed under the heading for Syria, Volume 26 (p. 307).