The Invention of the ‘Palestinian People’

The most successful of all the Arab verbal victories is the invention of the “Palestinian people.” The phrase was not used by any Arab leader, diplomat, spokesman, historian until the late 1960s when, after the Six Day War, the Arabs began to refer relentlessly, on every conceivable occasion, to the “Palestinian people.” The timing was no accident. That 1967 war’s outcome – the total defeat of three Arab armies —had convinced the Arabs that they needed to pursue a strategy not of military confrontation, but of propaganda, and by degrees to undermine the Jewish state, in order to pressure it to disgorge the territories it had won in the war, forcing it back within the 1949 armistice lines. And then they could try again to go in for the kill. A well-known quote by Zuheir Mohsen, the leader of the Palestinian terror group As Saiqa, laid bare the Arab strategy: “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.” The Israelis, failing to recognize the damage this “Palestinian people” invention was doing to their cause, not only let it pass when others invoked this made-up people, but still worse, used the phrase uncritically themselves. Among Israel’s leaders, the sole exception was the no-nonsense Golda Meir, who famously said “there is no Palestinian people.”

With this single phrase, just two words, the Arabs were able to redefine their war against Israel. What was in truth a gigantic gang-up by 22 Arab states, possessing 14 million square miles, and the greatest unearned wealth in human history, who ranged themselves against the single tiny Jewish state, with an area of 8,500 square miles (or less than 1/1,000th of the area belonging to the Arabs), now became for the outside world something much more acceptable. Much of that world has now been persuaded, preposterously, to see Israel as a mighty Goliath, and the Palestinian Arabs as David, engaged in a struggle to regain at least part of “our homeland that has been stolen by the Zionists.”

What would it take to undo the invented “Palestinian people”? The Israelis, and those who wish them well, should determinedly demote the word “Palestinian” from ethnic noun to geographic adjective, and in place of the word “people” put, correctly, the word “Arabs.” To wit: always and everywhere refer only to the “Palestinian Arabs.” Israel’s Prime Minister, Israeli ministers, ambassadors, Knesset members, members of Israel’s media, should carefully insist on referring to the “Palestinian Arabs.” Repetition is what allowed the notion of a “Palestinian people” to be accepted in the first place, and repetition of a truthful alternative can undo that factitious peoplehood.

Another Arab victory-through-words was achieved when, in 1950, casting about for a place name for those parts of Judea and Samaria that it had seized in the recent conflict, Jordan renamed the area “the West Bank.” In this, Jordan was following the example of the Romans, who had replaced the toponym “Judea” with “Palestine,” a shortened version of the area known as “Syria palaestina” (“Palestinian Syria”) which then became “Palestine,” in order to efface the Jewish connection to the land that the toponym “Judea” made all too clear. Those who – outside of Israel — now take care to refer to “Judea and Samaria” instead of the “West Bank” are self-conscious about doing so. They need to overcome any reluctance on this score. The Arabs have done a number on the world, and have made people feel that only wild-eyed crazed Zionists use those Biblical (and post-biblical) place names. We should remind themselves that Judea and Samaria were the place names that were good enough for Jesus (some may feel a gospel song coming on: “Judea and Samaria, don’t you see/If they were good enough for Jesus/They are good enough for me”). The place names Judea and Samaria were used continuously in the Western world for several thousand years until 1950, when some government officials in dusty Amman had other ideas and managed to convince the world that this area should now be called “the West Bank.”

Words to the wise. “Palestinian Arabs.” “Palestinian soi-disant refugees.” “Judea and Samaria.” Just keep it up.