Is there such a person as a Palestinian? Has there ever been a country called Palestine? Why is the belief that there is a Palestinian people widely accepted by the media and most governments? Look at any map of the Middle East. There is a region called Palestine, but there has never been a country of Palestine. If we were to use a regions name as a basis for determining weather or not an area is a county, why isn’t the Mojave Desert our 51^st state? Or why isn't there a Nation of Sahara?

        If Palestine is really a country, we should be able to answer a few basic questions concerning it. Such as when was it founded and by whom? What were its major cities? What was the name of its currency? Finally, since this country doesn’t exist today, what caused its demise and when did it occur? None of these questions can be answered, because Palestine is only the name of a region, not a country.

        What makes a separate people? Their religion, language, cuisine. The so-called Palestinians speak the same language and practice the same religion as all other Arab people. Any minor differences that exist between Palestinians and Arabs are like the minor differences between Northerners and Southerners here in the United States, yet they are all still Americans. In fact most Arabs living in Palestine today are not even indigenous to the region. When the Jews began changing the deserts and swamps back into a productive and thriving land, Arabs started migrating there. Even the leader of the PLO, Yasser Arafat, was born and raised in Cairo, Egypt, making him basically an Egyptian. Most of the Palestinian Arabs in the West Bank hold Jordanian passports, and most recognize Jordan as the Palestinian state. During interviews in 1981 and 1984, the late King Hussein stated, “The truth is that Jordan is Palestine and Palestine is Jordan”. Even Yasser Arafat himself has made this claim, “What you call Jordan is actually Palestine.” On March 31, 1977, the Dutch newspaper Trouw published an interview with Palestine Liberation Organization executive committee member Zahir Muhsein. Here is what he said:

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 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.

For tactical reasons, Jordan, which is a sovereign state with defined borders, cannot raise claims to Haifa and Jaffa, while as a Palestinian, I can undoubtedly demand Haifa, Jaffa, Beer-Sheva and Jerusalem. However, the moment we reclaim our right to all of Palestine, we will not wait even a minute to unite Palestine and Jordan.

        In 1867, Mark Twain visited what is now Israel and was troubled by what he saw; he wrote that he found nothing but a wasteland. The following is a quote from his book, The Innocents Abroad: “A desolate country whose soil is rich enough, but is given over wholly to weeds - a silent, mournful expanse. …A desolation is here that not even imagination can grace with the pomp of life and action… 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 the worthless soil, had almost deserted the country.”

        Claim to the land of Israel by the Jewish people is based on at least four points: 1) The land was promised to the patriarch Abraham by G-d; The first constitutional monarchy in what was the land of Canaan, was formed by the twelve tribes of Israel about 1000 BC. Jerusalem was founded as the nation’s capital by Israel's second king, King David. The population of Jerusalem has always been predominantly Jewish since the time of King David 2) In the 18th and 19th centuries, the waste lands were purchased from rich Arab Sheik's by wealthy Jews and then re-developed and re-settled by poor and moderate Jewish people. In a 1917 letter to leading Zionist, Lord Rothschild, the British Foreign Minister Arthur Balfour committed England to working towards “the establishment of Palestine as a national home for the Jewish people”. This became known as the Balfour Declaration..; 3) Political sovereignty over Palestine was granted to the Jewish people by the international community, when on May 14, 1948 the United Nations proclaimed The State of Israel! 4) The remainder of Israel was captured in defensive wars. Mainly the 6 day war of 1967, when Jerusalem became Israel's capital again for the first time in 2000 years.

        No one talked about a Palestinian state during the 19 years between 1948 through 1967 that the territories, including Jerusalem and Gaza, were occupied by the kingdoms of Jordan and Egypt. Not the United Nations, not even the Arab countries. Why didn’t anyone demand that Jordan or Egypt abdicate their ownership and give it to the Palestinians? The Palestinians themselves said nothing about a Palestinian state, because no one had heard of a Palestinian. Most of the modern Palestinians are in fact Arabs; they just happen to live in an area called Palestine. They are not a separate people.

        The use of the term Palestine in identifying the land of Israel officially took root when the Roman emperor Hadrian renamed the country, Syria Palestina. It is thought that Hadrian did this to punish the Jews for their revolt against Roman rule. He hoped removing the Judean name from the country would cut off their historic connection with their homeland. Palestine is believed to be derived from the name of the Philistines, an Aegean people who, in the 12^th century BC, settled along the Mediterranean coastal plain of what is now Israel and the Gaza Strip.

        The true Palestinians are the Jewish people. The first modern use of the term Palestinian appeared during the time of the British Mandate (1917-1948). The standard British reference for defining terms is the Oxford English Dictionary. It defines the term Palestinian as 1) “the Jews who returned to Israel from Moscow,” and 2) “Jews from Israel who volunteered to the British Army to fight Germany.” The word Palestine was inscribed on the shoulder badges of Jewish soldiers serving with the Allies during World War II. In addition, under the British Mandate, the Jewish-owned newspaper The Jerusalem Post was known as The Palestine Post. Also, the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra was called the Palestine Philharmonic Orchestra. So, under British rule, the term was especially understood to refer to a Jew from Palestine. The Arabs even rejected the term Palestinian at the beginning of the twentieth century, because it was thought to refer to the Jews.

        So, the conflict in Israel is not between Israelis and Palestinians, it is and always has been between Arabs and Jews. I fear that even if the “Palestinians” were to be given a state of their own, they would not be satisfied. The Arabs will only be satisfied when they have eliminated the Jewish people, or at least expelled them from Israel. Remember Golda Meir said "We will have peace as soon as the Arabs love their children more than they hate us"

        In 1993, After signing the Declaration of Principles on the White House lawn, when Arafat was offered 90% of what he was asking for, he explained his actions on Jordanian TV. Saying, “Since we cannot defeat Israel in war, we do this in stages. We take any and every territory that we can of Palestine, and establish a sovereignty there, and we use it as a springboard to take more. When the time comes, we can get the Arab nations to join us for the final blow against Israel.” Soon after Arafat broke every agreement he had made.

        The great lie that the Jews are stealing Palestinian land, oppressing the people, and eating their children is being told over and over. This lie is taught in text books used in almost all of the schools in Syria, Jordan, Egypt and especially schools in Palestinian controlled Gaza and the West Bank. Believing the lie is how so-called Palestinians justify sending suicide (homicide) bombers into Israel. With the aspiration of killing themselves along with as many men, women, children, babies, old people, and tourists as possible. Belief in the lie is why the United Nations, the Hollywood elite and the world media condemn Israel! They say Israeli's deserve and should expect the homicide bombings as a result of their stealing Palestinian land and oppressing the Palestinian people. The fact is, when they started returning to the land, the Jews didn't displace anyone, because no one was there to displace. A few Nomadic, Bedouin tribes moving in and out of the region were the only inhabitance of the area known as Palestine. It should now be clear as to weather or not there is such a person as a Palestinian, and who they are?