Reply #7: Gee Suadade [View All]

[MikeGalos]

I'd have thought you knew that.

There was a British Mandate of Palestine that included what is now Jordan, Israel, the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. Are you saying that's "Palestine"? If so, it's a colonial construct and has no historical or cultural significance. So, I guess you don't mean that.

Perhaps you mean the historical Palestine prior to the 1917 British Colonial period? Oops, there wasn't one. The land in the area was parts of several Ottoman districts with none of them and no combination of them matching the borders that the PA claims are "Palestine".

Perhaps you mean the ancient "Phillistine" that was used as the base for the mandate's name? No. That has no historical connection to the current Arab population but it DOES actually correspond pretty closely to the Gaza Strip.

The PLO/PA's definition is as slippery as oil. It corresponds to whatever land is held by Israel. In 1967, they had to rewrite their only 3 year old charter because they'd said that the West Bank was NOT Palestinian but was Jordanian and the Gaza Strip wasn't Palestinian but was Egyptian and when these became controlled by non-Arabs history had to be rewritten to make them "Palestinian" lands.

So, please, let us know what you mean. Feel free to tell us the basis for your claim as well.

Here's a hint. You won't be able to find a "Palestinian" source prior to 1964, by the way, because prior to then, the party line was that there was no such thing as a "Palestinian" and the Arab Refugees were, in fact, ethnic Syrians and trying to make them into anything else was an insult to them.