Palestinians: A State for a People That Doesn’t Even Exist?

When the American writer Mark Twain visited the West Bank and the Gaza Strip in the 19th century, he found a largely barren and uninhabited land. At that time, the area was under the control of the Ottoman Empire. To revitalize the wasteland between the Mediterranean Sea and the Jordan River, the Ottomans settled Muslim migrants from Albania, Bosnia, and the Caucasus in the region. When Egyptian troops occupied the area in the 1840s, more migrants from Egypt joined the existing population.

At the end of the 19th century, there was another wave of migration when the Ottoman Railway was built through the region, with a branch line to Haifa. This construction project attracted many workers from Syria and Jordan, who then settled there. At that time, the “Palestinian” population was not yet familiar with the Western concept of states and borders. Family and tribal ties defined certain boundaries. Economic and commercial networks also served to delineate geographical areas. Are the Palestinians today a people who deserve their own state? It depends on how one defines the term “nation.” Left-leaning political forces define a nation as a population living in a certain territory—regardless of where these people come from.

However, this is not the classical definition of the term “nation.” In the Christian Bible (and not only there), a nation is understood as a community of descent that can demonstrate a shared history and a distinct culture.

The best example is probably the Jewish people, wherever they live in the world. That is why integration for “returnees” to the promised homeland of Israel is easily possible. In November 2011, TOPIC analyzed an article by Ralf Balke, published in the left-wing German weekly magazine Jungle World (issue 39/2011).

The university-trained historian comes to the clear conclusion that the Palestinians do not exist as a distinct nation, and therefore have no right to their own state.

To support this claim, Balke cites statements by prominent Palestinians, such as those of the former member of the Executive Committee of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), Zuheir Mohsen. In 1977, the former PLO activist told the Dutch newspaper Trouw: “A Palestinian nation does not exist. The creation of a Palestinian state is merely a means to continue our struggle against the State of Israel in the interest of our Arab unity.”

Even representatives of the paramilitary terrorist organization Hamas, which controls the Palestinian Gaza Strip, admit that a Palestinian state as a political and administrative entity would be a historical novelty. “We have never in history been an independent state,” Hamas spokesman Mahmoud al-Zahar told the British weekly The Economist in 2008, “but we have always been part of an Arab and Islamic state.”

If the Palestinians had truly wanted their own state, the summer of 2000 would have been the opportunity. At that time, US President Bill Clinton and Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak offered the Palestinians their own state, but the then most powerful Palestinian leader, PLO chief Yasser Arafat, rejected the offer.

-TOPIC, September 2025.

Translated by Google.