Palestine - An entity looking for a foundation

It is always good to go back to the beginning of things, to that point where a significant event took place, one that shapes the future and leaves the past behind it.   This event took place in 135AD when the Romans renamed the land of Israel as “Palestine,” referencing the Philistines, who had disappeared by the 6th century BC.

The Palestinians can call themselves whatever they want, but they cannot hijack 3,000 years of history!

Arabs living in what Jews call the Land of Israel, including Judea and Samaria, call themselves “Palestinians” after “Palestine,” the non-Jewish term for the region.

They did not do so until quite recently, but nonetheless, many Arabs in the region and their sympathisers have co-opted the words “Palestine” and “Palestinian” to give their national movement a sense of longevity, credibility and ownership.

The word “Palestine” is not Arab or Middle Eastern in origin. It dates back 1,900 years and is derived from a people who were not native to the region — the Philistines, a people from the Aegean Sea who were closely related to the ancient Greeks. They lived on the coast of what is now the Gaza Strip and Israel but had disappeared by the 6th century BCE.

The name associated with them, however, did not die out. The Romans, in a fit of spite, reapplied the term “Palestine” to the Land of Israel centuries later, after they defeated a Judean uprising in 135 CE.  In effect, the Romans sought to erase the links between the Land of Israel and the Jewish people.

The “Palestine” title continued to be used long after the Roman Empire fell. When Muslim armies conquered the region in 629 AD, they Arabised the name to “Filastin.” This term cannot be found in the Islamic Quran, while the name “Israel” is mentioned several times.

The regional name “Palestine” endured. During the Middle Ages, it became common in early modern English and was employed by the Crusaders. But for nearly 2,000 years, it never referred to a country or a group of people.

In short, for most of recorded history, there were never any “Palestinians.”

After World War I, the modern shapes and contours of “Palestine” were established. The British Mandate for Palestine originally consisted of present-day Israel, Gaza, Judea and Samaria, and Jordan.

During the British Mandate period, the term “Palestinian” usually included Jews living in the Mandate, as well as their institutions.

Before modern Israel was founded, several prominent Jewish and Zionist organisations used the name “Palestine.” These included the Palestine Post newspaper and the Palestine Symphony Orchestra, which are now the Jerusalem Post and the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra.

At the time, many Arabs in British Mandatory Palestine considered themselves part of Greater Syria rather than “Palestinians.” In 1937, a local Arab leader told the Palestine Royal Commission, There is no such country [as Palestine]. Palestine is a term the Zionists invented! Our country for centuries was part of Syria.

Arab historian Philip Hitti echoed this sentiment shortly before Israel declared independence, saying, There is no such thing as Palestine in history, absolutely not.

Apart from some committed activists, many of the inhabitants of the land were not comfortable with the idea of there being an independent Palestinian homeland.  Even the younger generation of post 1948 Arab activists supported this ideal as evidenced by Ahmad Shuqeiri, a Lebanon-born politician of mixed Egyptian, Hijazi, and Turkish descent who served as the Arab League’s deputy secretary-general. As he put it, Palestine is part and parcel in the Arab homeland.

Asked to clarify which part of the “Arab homeland” this specific territory belonged, he added that Palestine is nothing but southern Syria.

And so, it is no surprise that Yasser Arafat, the (Egyptian-born and educated) father of the “Palestinian people”, followed this pan-Arab line. The 1964 PLO charter defined the Palestinians as “an integral part of the Arab nation”, rather than a distinct nationality and vowed allegiance to the ideal of pan-Arab unity – that is, to Palestine’s eventual assimilation into the greater Arab homeland.

In 1996, even that violent bastion which proclaims itself as the leader in the “struggle” for the Palestinian “people”, Hamas, said this, Islamic and traditional views reject the notion of establishing an independent Palestinian state … In the past, there was no independent Palestinian state. … [Hence] our main goal is to establish a great Islamic state, be it pan-Arabic or pan-Islamic… This…land…is not the property of the Palestinians…. This land is the property of all Muslims in all parts of the world.”  (senior Hamas leader Mahmud Zahar, 1996)

Further to this, we can add the words of Azmi Bishara, founding leader of the nationalist Balad Party (with seats in the Israeli parliament since 1999). In a statement he made in 2002 he said: My Palestinian identity never precedes my Arab identity…. I don’t think there is a Palestinian nation, there is [only] an Arab nation….

The watershed moment for the “Palestinian” national movement came after the 1967 Six-Day War, when Israel won control of Judea and Samaria from Jordan. The words of author Walid Shoebat of Bethlehem sum up the profound shift in local Arabs’ identity: On June 4, 1967, I was a Jordanian, and overnight I became a Palestinian.

Bishop Michael Hough                                                                                August 2025