The developing peace agreement between Israel and the United Arab Emirates has been met with discontent by Palestinian leaders. They complain that the UAE and other Arab states considering normalization or making peace with Israel without linking it to resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict amounts to an abandonment of the “Palestinian people.”
The terms that we use are important. “The Palestinian people” has the connotation of an ancient nation. In fact, some modern-day Palestinian leaders claim that their people descend from the ancient Canaanites and have lived in this region for thousands of years.
While in no way taking away from the desire of the modern-day people referring to themselves as Palestinian to have a state of their own, this suggestion is simply false. There is no historic or archaeological record of such a nation. Rather, the people found between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea are a mix of indigenous and migrant Arab populations. The term “Palestinian” has no long-term historic connection to these people.
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Origins of ‘Palestine’
So, where does the name “Palestinian” actually come from and how did the Arabs living in the Holy Land become known as “the Palestinians?”
The term “Palestine” is believed to be a derivative of the Egyptian and Hebrew word “peleshet,” which means “migratory.” The term was used to describe an Aegean people who came to the region in 12th century BCE and conquered the Mediterranean coastline now known as Gaza. They were given this name because they were seen as migrants coming to a region which they had no previous connection to. The book of Judges and Samuel are filled with stories about these Philistines. The term “peleshet” appears in the Jewish Bible at least 250 times.
The term “Palestine” first appears in the writings of the Greek historian Herodotus in 5th century BCE describing the coastal area where these ancient Philistines lived. When the Romans destroyed the Temple, exiled the Jews, and squelched the last Jewish revolt in 132 CE, they adapted the word to be Palaestina and applied it to the entire region in an attempt to minimize Jewish identification with the Land of Israel, which was called Judea at the time.
It is important to emphasize that the entire land was called Palestine 500 years before Islam arrived in the region and that the word “Palestine” or “Filastin” does not appear even once in the Quran.
The name lasted through the invasion of the Muslim caliphate in 634, the Crusaders, and the Mamelukes.
The term “Palestine” was used to describe the land south of Syria during the reign of the Ottoman Empire in the land from 1517 to 1917, but not as its official name which was Southern Syria. It was never an independent, autonomous region, but a province of a larger state.
So, is there a Palestinian people?
Throughout the centuries during which the region changed into the hands of different conquerors and rulers, there was zero initiative for statehood by the Arabs living in the area. The nationalistic movement among the Arabs began in the 20th century as a response to Zionism and Jewish immigration into the land. Even at that time, the Arabs in the land were not called “the Palestinians.”
Until the establishment of the State of Israel in 1948, the entire Holy Land was called “Palestine” and everyone living in it — Jews, Muslims, and Christians alike — were “Palestinian.” When the British took control over following World War I it was officially called “The Mandate for Palestine” and that included modern-day Israel as well as today’s Jordan.
The Jewish-owned newspaper currently called “The Jerusalem Post” was called “The Palestine Post” and Jews living in the land had Palestinian passports. So, “Palestinian” had nothing specific to do with identifying the Arabs who were living in Palestine.
It was only in 1964 that Arabs in the Holy Land took the name “Palestinians” for themselves when the Palestine Liberation Organization was founded as an official movement to destroy the Jewish State. Before then, Arabs had typically rejected the notion that their identity was Palestinian, instead describing themselves as either Arab or Muslim.
Conflict resolution requires hearing and understanding the narratives of both sides. But facts are also critically important. Recognizing the origins of the term “Palestinian” and the “Palestinian people” is important when analyzing and trying to address the complex Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
