Thesis Paper: Regional: Palestinians- Modern Usage

The Modern Use of “Palestine:”


In 1920’s, post WWI, the British took control of Palestine, formerly under the Ottoman Empire’s rule, from the Treaty of Versailles. They named it the Mandate of Palestine. However, a few questions of settlement arose when Jews from Europe came to settle back in the land they were thrown out of (by the Romans and later the oppressive Fatimid Dynasty and Crusades). Who were the inhabitants? How did they arise?

As put by PalestinianFacts.org: “The disparate peoples recently assumed and purported to be "settled Arab indigenes, for a thousand years" were in fact a "heterogeneous" community with no "Palestinian" identity, and according to an official British historical analysis in 1920, no Arab identity either:
The people west of the Jordan are not Arabs, but only Arabic-speaking. The bulk of the population are fellahin.... In the Gaza district they are mostly of Egyptian origin; elsewhere they are of the most mixed race. "

This raises many more questions. If they are not Arab, what are they? If there was never a land of Palestine, who are they? PalestinianFacts.org continues to explain whom the “mixed races” were compiled of. These Palestinians spoke fifty or more languages, and in short of words, the ethnology of Palestine is a conglomeration of everyone who has ever conquered or crossed paths of the Middle East. Including, but not limited to: Assyrians, Persians (Motowila), Romans, Egyptians, Armenians, Greece, Italians, Turks (Circassion), Germans, Kurds, Bosnians, Bedouins, Algerians, and Sudanese. So, the people we call the “Palestinians” today are a collaboration of foreigners taking root in the cross roads of the world.

Therefore, the term “Palestinian” that will be used in conjunction of how Encyclopedia Britannica describes it as, “the Arabs of the former Mandate of Palestine, excluding Israel.” But, still, who are they?

The Arab identity in Palestine had been developing for the last 200 years. But the notion of an independent people had only come about with the rise of Israel, the Jewish State. In fact, the Palestinians never had their own state, further questioning their identity as a nation. If they are stateless, can they be a nation? They could be described as a stateless nation, as the Jews have been in the Diaspora. However, that would mean they have an ethnic identity. Which, in theory, is Arab. But why, then, wouldn’t they simply be “Arabs,” or simply belong to another Arab state such as Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon, or Syria. Or one of the ___ states in the Middle East?

Such questions hope to be answered by their history in the making: Palestinians today.