In the Arabs own words there has never been a Palesinian Arab national identity or people.
(With thanks to) - Dr Harry Mandlebaum who writes the following, using soley Arab, Muslim, and foreign sources. Jewish / Israeli sources were deliberately left out to avoid accusations of bias.
At the beginning of the 20th century, there were practically no Arabs in the Holy Land. Historically, a "Palestinian" people never existed. The English name "Palestinian", to describe the local Arab population, was invented AFTER the establishment of the State of Israel in 1948. These Arabs do not even have a native name to describe themselves in their own Arabic language.
The Arabs who now claim to be natives of the Holy Land have migrated to Palestine and invaded the land after 1917, from neighboring Arab countries.
There is only one possible solution to the "Palestinians" desire for a homeland - let them return to where they came from - to where they lived earlier for hundreds or thousands of years - to their real homeland in their original Arab countries.
Unknown to most of the world population, the origin of the "Palestinian" Arabs' claim to the Holy Land spans a period of a meager 30 years - a drop in the bucket compared to the thousands of years of the region's rich history.
At the beginning of the 20th century, there were practically no Muslim Arabs in the Holy Land. By contrast, the Jews, despite 2000 years of persecution and forced conversions by various conquerors, have throughout most of history been the majority population there. In Jerusalem Jews were always the largest demographic group, except for periods when conquerors specifically threw them out and prevented them from returning.
When General Allenby, the commander of the British military forces, conquered Palestine in 1917/1918, only a few thousand Muslim Arabs resided in the Holy Land. Most of the Arabs were Christians, and most of the Muslims in the area either came from Turkey under the Ottoman Empire, or were the descendants of Jews and Christians who were forcefully converted to Islam by the Muslim conquerors. These Muslims were not of Arab origin. Most references to Arabs in Palestine before 1917 refer to the Christian Arabs, not to the Muslims.
It is important to note that estimates and censuses conducted by the Muslim conquerors were biased. Therefore, the only reliable data is provided by non-Muslim sources. Tourists and politicians, Arabs and non-Arabs alike, have documented their observations of the population in the Holy Land beginning more that a thousand years ago.
Let's start at the early days and continue into the Ottoman period:
The historian James Parkes wrote: "During the first century after the Arab conquest [670-740 CE], the caliph and governors of Syria and the Holy Land ruled entirely over Christian and Jewish subjects. Apart from the Bedouin in the earliest days, the only Arabs west of the Jordan were the garrisons."
In year 985 the Arab writer Muqaddasi complained: "the mosque is empty of worshipers... The Jews constitute the majority of Jerusalems population" (The entire city of Jerusalem had only one mosque?).
In 1377, Ibn Khaldun, one of the most creditable Arab historians, wrote: "Jewish sovereignty in the Land of Israel extended over 1400 years... It was the Jews who implanted the culture and customs of the permanent settlement".
In 1695-1696, the Dutch scholar and cartographer, Adriaan Reland (Hadriani Relandi) , wrote reports about visits to the Holy Land. (There are those who claim that he did not personally visit the Holy land but collected reports from other visitors.) He was fluent in Hebrew and Arabic. He documented visits to many locations. He writes: The names of settlements were mostly Hebrew, some Greek, and some Latin-Roman. No settlement had an original Muslim-Arab name with a historical root in its location.
Most of the land was empty, desolate, and the inhabitants few in number and mostly concentrated in Jerusalem, Acco, Tzfat, Jaffa, Tiberius and Gaza. Most of the inhabitants were Jews and the rest Christians.
There were few Muslims, mostly nomad Bedouins. The Arabs were predominantly Christians with a tiny minority of Muslims. In Jerusalem there were approximately 5000 people, mostly Jews and some Christians. In Nazareth there were approximately 700 people - all Christians. In Gaza there were approximately 550 people - half of them Jews and half Christians. Um-El-Phachem was a village of 10 families - all Christians.
The only exception was Nablus with 120 Muslims from the Natsha family and approximately 70 Shomronites.
In 1835 Alphonse de Lamartine wrote: "Outside the city of Jerusalem, we saw no living object, heard no living sound. . .a complete eternal silence reigns in the town, in the highways, in the country."
In 1844, William Thackeray writes about the road from Jaffa to Jerusalem: "Now the district is quite deserted, and you ride among what seem to be so many petrified waterfalls. We saw no animals moving among the stony brakes; scarcely even a dozen little birds in the whole course of the ride."
In 1857, the British consul in Palestine, James Finn, reported: "The country is in a considerable degree empty of inhabitants and therefore its greatest need is that of a body of population."
In 1866, W.M. Thomson writes: "How melancholy is this utter desolation. Not a house, not a trace of inhabitants, not even shepherds, to relieve the dull monotony ... Much of the country through which we have been rambling for a week appears never to have been inhabited, or even cultivated; and there are other parts, you say, still more barren."
In 1867, Mark Twain - Samuel Clemens, the famous author of "Huckleberry Finn" and "Tom Sawyer", toured the Holy Land. This is how he described the land: "There is not a solitary village throughout its whole extent; not for thirty miles in either direction... One may ride ten miles hereabouts and not see ten human beings ... Nazareth is forlorn... Jericho lies a mouldering ruin... Bethlehem and Bethany, in their poverty and humiliation... untenanted by any living creature... A desolate country whose soil is rich enough but is given over wholly to weeds. A silent, mournful expanse. We never saw a human being on the whole route. There was hardly a tree or a shrub anywhere. Even the olive and the cactus, those fast friends of a worthless soil, had almost deserted the country."
In 1874, Reverend Samuel Manning wrote: "But where were the inhabitants? This fertile plain, which might support an immense population, is almost a solitude.... Day by day we were to learn afresh the lesson now forced upon us, that the denunciations of ancient prophecy have been fulfilled to the very letter -- "the land is left void and desolate and without inhabitants." (Jeremiah, ch.44 v.22)
In 1892, B. W. Johnson writes: "In the portion of the plain between Mount Carmel and Jaffa one sees but rarely a village or other sights of human life... A ride of half an hour more brought us to the ruins of the ancient city of Cæsarea, once a city of two hundred thousand inhabitants, and the Roman capital of Palestine, but now entirely deserted... I laid upon my couch at night, to listen to the moaning of the waves and to think of the desolation around us."
In 1913, a British report, by the Palestinian Royal Commission, quotes an account of the conditions on the coastal plain along the Mediterranean Sea: "The road leading from Gaza to the north was only a summer track, suitable for transport by camels or carts. No orange groves, orchards or vineyards were to be seen until one reached the [Jewish] Yabna village. Houses were mud. Schools did not exist. The western part toward the sea was almost a desert. The villages in this area were few and thinly populated. Many villages were deserted by their inhabitants."
As we can see, throughout history, as documented by Arab historians and by foreign observers before 1917, the land was desolate; there were practically no Muslim Arabs in the cities outside of Jerusalem (except 120 Muslims in Nablus); and the number of Muslim Arabs (other than Ottoman Muslims or Christian Arabs) was minuscule, most of them nomadic Bedouins.
The difference between these multiple authentic accounts and the falsified Muslim-Arab propaganda is huge, almost beyond imagination.
When the Holy Land was taken from the Ottomans by the British, it was no longer under Muslim control. The Quran commands Muslims to take land away from non-Muslims, including land which they have never trodden on before. Following the British conquest of the Holy land, the Muslim Arabs embarked on a massive immigration into the Holy Land, fulfilling their religious obligation to capture as much foreign land as possible.
The following accounts describe the massive Arab immigration after 1918:
In 1930/31, Lewis French, the British Director of Development wrote about the Arabs in Palestine: "We found it inhabited by fellahin (Arab farmers) who lived in mud hovels and suffered severely from the prevalent malaria... Large areas were uncultivated... The fellahin, if not themselves cattle thieves, were always ready to harbor these and other criminals. The individual plots changed hands annually. There was little public security, and the fellahin's lot was an alternation of pillage and blackmail by their neighbors, the bedouin (Arab nomads)."
The British Hope-Simpson Commission recommended, in 1930, "Prevention of illicit immigration" to stop the illegal Arab immigration from neighboring Arab countries.
The British Governor of the Sinai (1922-36) reported in the Palestine Royal Commission Report: "This illegal immigration was not only going on from the Sinai, but also from Transjordan and Syria."
The governor of the Syrian district of Hauran, Tewfik Bey El Hurani, admitted in 1934 that in a single period of only a few months over 30,000 Syrians from Houran had moved to Palestine.
British Prime Minister Winston Churchill noted the Arab influx. Churchill, a veteran of the early years of the British mandate in the Holy Land, noted in 1939 that far from being persecuted, the Arabs have crowded into the country and multiplied till their population has increased more than even all world Jewry could lift up the Jewish population.
The Arab population in the Holy Land increased only because of their massive immigration from neighboring Arab countries. Before 1918, when the Arab immigration started, only a minuscule number of Muslim Arabs lived in the Holy Land, practically all of them in Jerusalem. This is why it is so difficult to find an old-age Muslim-Arab whose grandparents were born in the Holy Land.
The Quran explicitly encourages lying and deception if it helps Muslims achieve a desired goal . To deny the massive invasion of the Holy Land by foreign Muslims, the falsified Muslim-Arab propaganda claims that it is a myth. If it is indeed a myth, how can anyone explain the following simple observations?
The grandparents of the author's wife were born in the Holy Land in the 19th century. They saw with their own eyes how empty the land was at the time. They also lived through and experienced first-hand the British conquest and the Arab's massive invasion of the land that started in 1918. This invasion lasted for only 30 years, and ended in 1948 with the evacuation of the British from the land and the declaration of the state of Israel.
The family names of many Arabs who now occupy the Holy Land reveal their country of origin: Masri (from Egypt ), Iraqi (from Iraq), Tarabulsi (from Tarabulus-Tripoli in Lebanon), Hourani (from Houran in Syria), Husseini (from Jordan), and Saudi (from Saudi Arabia).
Following the publication of an earlier version of this article, the author received an email message from a reader who used to work with Arabs in Gaza and in various villages in the West Bank in the 1970's. In his email the reader describes friendly discussions about family history with his Arab co-workers. Most of the co-workers had grandfathers who immigrated to the Holy Land from neighboring countries.
When Churchill said that the Arabs have crowded into the country and multiplied till their population has increased more than even all world Jewry could lift up the Jewish population. was he lying? Churchill was not a Muslim...
The name "Palestina" is a Latin-Roman name based on the Hebrew Biblical name of the ancient "Philistines" -- "Plishtim" in Hebrew. The translation of this name to English is: "invaders". The Philistines arrived from the Mediterranean islands near Greece and invaded the land about 4000 years ago . The Philistines are extinct since approximately 2000 years ago, and have no ancestral or historical relationship to Arabs. Before 1917, during the 400-years rule of the Ottoman empire, the Ottomans did not call the Holy Land "Palestina".
The British decided to renew this ancient name and called the land "Palestine". The local Arabs never called themselves "Palestinians", not even during the British mandate. Both Arab and British leaders referred to them only as "Arabs".
For example: The Hope-Simpson report published by the British in 1930, contains the phrase "the number of Palestinian unemployed, whether Arab, Jew or other...". "Palestinian" was used only as an adjective in reference to the location and also included Jews. The Arab inhabitants were always referred to as "Arabs". The word "palestinians" does not appear anywhere in this report. "Palestinian Arabs", "Palestinian Jews", and "Palestinian Christians" were common terms. But, "Palestinians", as a noun, before 1948, was not yet invented.
After 30 years of invasion, following the end of the British mandate and the declaration of the state of Israel in 1948, the Arabs recognized the fact that they invaded foreign land and invented for themselves a name in English -- "Palestinians". If the British were to call the land "New England", and the local Arabs were to call themselves "English" would they automatically become English?
It is important to emphasize that the concept of a "Palestinian" to describe the local Arab residents was invented by the Arabs AFTER the declaration of the state of Israel. This group of Arabs who started calling themselves "the Palestinian nation" after 1948, does not have an original name in their native Arabic language. Is there any nation in the world which does not have a name in its original native language?
The Arabs who invaded the Holy Land do not have a name in their native Arabic language because they are not, and have never been, a unified group or a nation.
Historically, a "Palestinian" people never existed. The fact is that the Arabs who now call themselves by the English name "Palestinians" don't even know what their name is or should be in Arabic. Even Arab leaders and historians have admitted that a "Palestinian" people never existed. For example:
In 1937, the Arab leader Auni Bey Abdul Hadi told the Peel Commission: "There is no such country as Palestine. Palestine is a term the Zionists invented. Palestine is alien to us."
In 1946, Princeton's Arab professor of Middle East history, Philip Hitti, told the Anglo-American Committee of Inquiry: "It's common knowledge, there is no such thing as Palestine in history."
In March 1977, Zahir Muhsein, an executive member of the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO), said in an interview to the Dutch newspaper Trouw: "The 'Palestinian people' does not exist. The creation of a Palestinian state is only a means for continuing our struggle against the state of Israel."
Joseph Farah, an Arab-American journalist, writes: "The truth is that Palestine is no more real than Never-Never Land. Palestine has never existed as an autonomous entity."
Walid Shoebat, a former PLO terrorist acknowledged the lie he was fighting for: Why is it that on June 4th 1967 I was a Jordanian and overnight I became a Palestinian? ... we considered ourselves Jordanian until the Jews returned to Jerusalem. Then all of the sudden we were Palestinians. They removed the star from the Jordanian flag and all at once we had a Palestinian flag.
The Syrian dictator Hafez Assad said: "There is no such thing as a Palestinian people, there is no Palestinian entity".
Dr. Azmi Bishara, a notable leader of the Arabs in Israel, who fought against the Israeli "occupation", said in a TV interview: "There is no Palestinian nation. It's a colonial invention. When were there any Palestinians?"
The Arabs who now claim to be natives of the Holy Land have migrated to Palestine and invaded the land after 1917, from neighboring Arab countries, predominantly from areas now known as Egypt, Jordan, Syria, Lebanon, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, and Iraq.
None of these countries existed as nations prior to 1913. They were nothing but a disorganized collection of tribes, constantly terrorizing each other, trying to seize land from their neighbors. Unfortunately, those Arab invaders, imported into the Holy Land their age-old "culture" of terrorizing neighbors to seize land.
Many of them were social outcasts and criminals who could not find jobs in their own countries so they searched for their luck elsewhere. Some of them were accepted by the British regime as a source of cheap labor and were allowed to settle on unoccupied Jewish land.
Even Yassir Arafat, the leader of the PLO, is not a native of the Holy Land. He called himself a "Palestinian refugee" but spoke Arabic with an Egyptian dialect. He was born in 1929 in Cairo, Egypt. He served in the Egyptian army, studied in the University of Cairo, and lived in Cairo until 1956. He then moved to Saudi-Arabia and founded the Al-Fatah terror organization, the precursor to the PLO, in Kuwait in 1958, together with his Saudi-Arabian friends. How exactly does that constitute a "Palestinian refugee"? Being born in 1929 in Cairo, he cannot even be considered a son of Palestinian refugees (there were no refugees in 1929). Arafat must have been a good student of Muhammad, the founder of the Muslim religion, who said in the Quran: "War is deception".[16]
In their propaganda, the Arabs who now call themselves "Palestinians" consistently demand that Israel and the world recognize their "pre-1948" rights. That's about 60 years ago. Mysteriously, they are never willing to add another 60 years to their "historical" claims on the Holy Land. They know very well that doing so will send them back to where they came from - Jordan, Syria, Egypt, Lebanon, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, and Iraq.
Years ago, during negotiations with the, so-called, "Palestinians", a Israeli negotiator proposed to revise a mention of their claim of "pre-1948" rights and replace it with "pre-1917". The "Palestinians" vehemently opposed. Now we know why.
If there is anyone who still believes that a "Palestinian" nation ever existed before the end of the British mandate and the founding of the state of Israel, would they please be kind enough to answer when was it founded and by whom? What was its name in Arabic (not in Latin-English)? What was its form of government? What were its borders? Name one top "Palestinian" leader before Arafat? Which country ever recognized its existence and when? In which library or museum can we find any of its literature, coins, or historical artifacts? The answer to all these questions is "nil". As stated by Zahir Muhsein: "The 'Palestinian' people does not exist."
Some Arabs consider themselves the descendants of Abraham, the forefather of the Jewish nation. Ironically, if not for Muhammad's study of the Bible, the Arabs would not have known of the existence of Abraham.
Muhammad invented the Muslim religion in the 7th century AD, in Saudi Arabia. He studied the Bible in order to be better equipped in his attempts to persuade the Jews to follow his newly invented religion. When the Jews refused, he dictated the stories of the Quran (the Muslim bible) to his students, and filled it with his own imaginary accounts of Biblical events. (Muhammad himself did not know how to read or write.) He even took the liberty to change the God-given day of rest, Saturday - the Sabbath. Since Sunday was already taken by the Christians, he picked Friday as the next-best Muslim day of rest.
Muhammad never visited Jerusalem and the Holy Land, and did not consider them important enough to mention their name in the Quran even once.
By comparison, Mecca and Medina, the only two Muslim holy cities, are mentioned in the Quran hundreds of times. Even though the name of the Holy Land is not mentioned in the Quran, the Quran refers to the Holy Land many times as the land of the children of Israel.
The Jewish Holy Temple stood on Temple Mount long before the Muslim religion, or any other current world religion was conceived. Even when the founders of the Christian religion walked around in the streets of ancient Jerusalem there were no mosques nor churches there - only the Jewish Holy Temple and nothing else. The land of the Jewish Holy Temple in Jerusalem was purchased by King David, for the Jewish people, approximately 850 years BCE. The deed, the name of the previous owner, and the purchase price were recorded in the Bible (See Samuel-B Ch. 24 and Chronicles-A Ch. 21-22).
Today the Muslim "Palestinians" claim to own Temple Mount, the site of the Jewish Holy Temple in Jerusalem.
They claim it is "their" holy site. Does anyone in the rest of the world know which way the Muslims in Jerusalem face when they pray? When the Muslims in Jerusalem pray in their mosques, even in the "Al Aktza" mosque built on the edge of Temple Mount, they actually stand with their back turned to Temple Mount. And, when they bow down in their prayers they show their behind to the site of the Holy Temple. How consistent is that with considering it a Muslim holy site?
The Muslims have long ago recognized that the Holy Temple is a Jewish holy site. Its name in Arabic is "Al Quds" - "The Holiness" in English, which is an abbreviation for "The House of Holiness" - The Jewish Holy Temple.
The fact is that Jerusalem is not important enough to the Muslims to be mentioned even once in the Quran, while Mecca and Medina, the only two Muslim holy cities, are mentioned hundreds of times. Even when the Jordanians occupied Jerusalem, up until 1967, they never considered it their capital, and Arab leaders did not come to visit.
Can any Muslim in the world produce any credible evidence for their connection to this holy site, other than in Muhammad's dream? Believe it or not, the one and only source for the Muslim's claim to Jerusalem and the site of the Holy Temple, is a mention in the Quran of a dream that Muhammad had about an unknown "far distant place (mosque)". This "far distant place (mosque)" could not have been in Jerusalem, because in Muhammad's time there was not even a single mosque in Jerusalem. The first mosque in Jerusalem was built 83 years after Muhammad died. Perhaps this "far distant place" is the site of the White House in Washington DC? Or the Vatican in Italy?
The best reference for understanding the Muslim-Arab mentality and politically-motivated falsification of history is Muhammad's own advice to his followers: "War is deception".
The real problem facing those Arabs today is not the lack of a homeland. The historical root-cause of their problem and frustration is the fact that the countries they came from have not agreed to accept them back in. This is why so many of them live, up until today, in refugee camps, in neighboring Arab countries, lacking fundamental civil rights. In their frustration they feel that the only hope and choice they have is to try and steal a country. Many of the vehicles and the agricultural equipment in the Palestinian Authority have been stolen from their Israeli neighbors. For a while, Israel suffered the highest rate of automobile thefts in the world! Most of these stolen vehicles were later found in towns and villages of the Palestinian Authority.
If invading foreign land is so easy; if stealing vehicles is so easy; why not try and steal a country too?
There is only one possible solution to the "Palestinians" desire for a homeland. It is the only solution that will satisfy their claim of the right to return to their homeland. Since helping them return to where they lived for less than 30 years is their own definition of justice, then helping them return to where they lived earlier for hundreds or thousands of years is, by the same definition, a better justice.
Let's all help them get the better justice they deserve. Let's help them return to where they came from - Egypt, Jordan, Syria, Lebanon, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, and Iraq.
Recent proposals have suggested a two-state solution to the Israeli-Arab conflict - one for the Jews and one for the Arabs. The map below shows that a much more generous solution already exists - 21 states - one for the Jews and twenty for the Arabs.
The Quran contains more than 100 verses commanding Muslims to fight a war against non-Muslims. Some verses command Muslims to chop off heads and fingers and terrorize and kill non-Muslims. Other verses command Muslims to take land away from non-Muslims. Muslims are also prohibited from living in peace with non-Muslims on non-Muslim land.
Anyone who avoids fighting against non-Muslims is punished. Because of such religious commandments, there is no chance and no hope that Muslims will ever live peacefully together with non-Muslims who live on non-Muslim land. Temporary periods of calm are nothing but a waiting period - waiting in ambush - waiting for an opportunity to strike.
History proves that a population exchange is the only possible solution, other than war, to conflicts between Muslims and non-Muslims. For example, in 1923, the war between Turkey and Greece ended only when both sides agreed to a population exchange of more than two million Muslims and Greek-Orthodox Christians. Similarly, in 1947, more than 14 million Muslims, Hindus, and Sikhs, have exchanged locations in India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh.
More than 800,000 Jews have relocated out of the Arab countries; about 600,000 moved to Israel and 200,000 moved to other countries. Now it is time to end the conflict between Jews and Muslims in Israel. The only possible peaceful solution is to complete the second half of this Jewish-Muslim population exchange by returning the Muslims in the Holy Land back to the Muslim countries where they came from.There is no shortage of space in the Arab-Muslim countries.
