There Was Never a Palestinian State — Not Once in All of Recorded History
Among the most repeated claims in modern political discourse is the assertion that Israel “occupies” the land of a people who once possessed a sovereign state. The narrative is taught in universities, printed in newspapers, and repeated in United Nations chambers as though it were settled historical fact. It is not. It is not merely contested — it is demonstrably false. There has never been a sovereign Arab state called Palestine. Not in the Ottoman era. Not under the British Mandate. Not between 1948 and 1967, when the Arab nations that today demand a Palestinian state controlled every inch of the West Bank and Gaza. Not once in all of recorded history. This is not a matter of interpretation. It is a matter of the historical record — and the historical record is unambiguous.
What Makes a State — And Why “Palestine” Fails Every Test
The internationally recognized criteria for statehood were codified in the Montevideo Convention on the Rights and Duties of States, signed December 26, 1933, which established four requirements: a permanent population, a defined territory, an effective government, and the capacity to enter into relations with other states. By every one of these criteria, a Palestinian Arab state has never existed at any point in history. There was no defined territory governed by Palestinian Arabs. There was no Palestinian Arab government. There was no Palestinian Arab national institution capable of conducting foreign affairs. There was, in short, no state.
The question of whether a “Palestinian people” constituted a distinct national group — as opposed to the broader Arab people — was answered with surprising candor by one of the most senior figures in the Palestine Liberation Organization itself. In a 1977 interview with the Dutch newspaper Trouw, Zuheir Mohsen, a member of the PLO Executive Committee and head of the as-Saiqa organization, stated plainly: “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.” This was not a slip of the tongue. It was a confession.
“There has never been a sovereign Arab state called Palestine — not in the Ottoman era, not under the British Mandate, not between 1948 and 1967.”
Four Hundred Years of Ottoman Rule — No Palestinian State
The Ottoman Empire controlled the Land of Israel from 1517 to 1917 — four consecutive centuries. In that entire period, there was no administrative unit, no province, no governorate, and no political entity called “Palestine.” The Ottomans divided the region into vilayets and sanjaks according to their own administrative logic. The area roughly corresponding to the Land of Israel was divided between the Vilayet of Beirut, the Vilayet of Damascus, and the independent Mutasarrifate of Jerusalem. The word “Palestine” appeared in certain European maps and travel literature as a loose geographical term inherited from the Roman era. It had no administrative reality, no government, and no political meaning.
During the entire Ottoman period, the Arab inhabitants of the region did not identify themselves as “Palestinians.” They identified as Arabs, as Muslims, as members of their specific tribal or family clans, as subjects of the Ottoman Sultan. The concept of a distinct “Palestinian” national identity was entirely absent from their self-understanding. No Ottoman document, no census, no administrative record, and no cultural artifact from this period reflects the existence of a “Palestinian people” in the sense that the term is used today.
The British Mandate — A Geography, Not a Nation
When Britain received the League of Nations Mandate for Palestine in 1920, the word “Palestine” became an administrative label for a geographic region. The Mandate document, formally approved by the League of Nations on July 24, 1922, is a landmark text — and it is profoundly revealing in what it says and what it does not say. It makes explicit reference to “the Jewish people” as the beneficiaries of the national home being established in Palestine. It acknowledges “the historical connection of the Jewish people with Palestine.” It obligates Britain to facilitate Jewish immigration and land settlement. Nowhere in the Mandate does the document refer to a “Palestinian Arab people” or acknowledge any Arab national claim to the territory as a distinct people.
Under the British Mandate, the word “Palestinian” was most commonly applied to the Jewish population of the land. The Palestine Post — founded in 1932 and now known as the Jerusalem Post — was a Jewish newspaper. The Palestine Symphony Orchestra — founded in 1936, today the Israel Philharmonic — was a Jewish institution. Palestinian passports under the Mandate were issued overwhelmingly to Jews. The Arab Higher Committee and the Arab League consistently identified their constituents as “Arabs,” not “Palestinians.” The Arab world rejected the label because it implied legitimacy for the British-administered territory, which included a Jewish national home they opposed.
1947 — Statehood Was Offered and Rejected
On November 29, 1947, the United Nations General Assembly passed Resolution 181 — the Partition Plan for Palestine. The resolution called for the division of the British Mandate territory into two states: a Jewish state and an Arab state. The Jewish Agency, representing the Jewish community of Palestine, accepted the partition plan despite it assigning them a far smaller territory than the full scope of the Mandate. The Arab Higher Committee, the Arab League, and the governments of every surrounding Arab nation rejected it entirely. They did not negotiate. They did not counter-propose. They declared war.
Azzam Pasha, the Secretary-General of the Arab League, declared upon the vote: “This will be a war of extermination and momentous massacres.” When Israel declared independence on May 14, 1948, five Arab armies — Egypt, Jordan, Syria, Iraq, and Lebanon — invaded immediately. They did not invade to create a Palestinian state. They invaded to destroy the Jewish state. The Arab rejection of Resolution 181 was the moment when a Palestinian Arab state was within reach — and was deliberately, voluntarily refused. The responsibility for the absence of a Palestinian state in 1948 lies not with Israel, but with the Arab world that chose war over peace and annihilation over compromise.
1948 to 1967 — Jordan and Egypt Held the Land and Did Nothing
After the 1948 War of Independence, Jordan annexed the West Bank — including East Jerusalem — and Egypt assumed military control of the Gaza Strip. For nineteen consecutive years, from 1948 to 1967, these two Arab states controlled every square inch of the territory that Palestinian leaders today claim must become a Palestinian state. Jordan formally annexed the West Bank in 1950. Egypt never annexed Gaza but administered it as a military occupation zone under martial law.
In nineteen years, neither Jordan nor Egypt made any move to create a Palestinian state. Jordan offered its Arab residents Jordanian citizenship — not Palestinian citizenship. Egypt imposed martial law on Gaza and restricted the movement of its inhabitants. Neither country held elections for a Palestinian government, established Palestinian national institutions, or took any step toward Palestinian self-determination. No United Nations resolution during this period demanded that Jordan or Egypt give the West Bank or Gaza to the Palestinian Arabs. Not a single one. This inconvenient fact — that the international community was entirely silent about Palestinian statehood when Arab nations controlled the relevant territories — is never mentioned by those who insist that Israeli administration of these areas is the singular obstacle to Palestinian statehood.
“In nineteen years, with Jordan controlling the West Bank and Egypt controlling Gaza, not a single UN resolution demanded a Palestinian state.”
The PLO Was Founded Before the “Occupation”
The Palestine Liberation Organization was founded on May 28, 1964 — three full years before the Six-Day War of June 1967, in which Israel captured the West Bank from Jordan and Gaza from Egypt. In 1964, Israel did not control a single inch of the West Bank or Gaza. The West Bank was in Jordanian hands. Gaza was in Egyptian hands. The original PLO Charter of 1964 explicitly excluded both the West Bank and Gaza from the territory the organization claimed, since those areas were in Arab hands. Article 24 stated that the PLO “does not exercise any regional sovereignty over the West Bank in the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan, on the Gaza Strip or the Himmah Area.”
The PLO was not founded to create a Palestinian state alongside Israel. It was founded to destroy Israel. Its founding charter called for the “elimination of Zionism” and the liquidation of “the Zionist and imperialist presence” in the region. This single historical fact dismantles the foundational narrative of the Palestinian national movement. If Israeli administration of the West Bank and Gaza were the cause of Palestinian statelessness, the PLO should not have existed in 1964 — three years before Israel held a single inch of either territory. But it did exist, because the goal was never a Palestinian state alongside Israel. The goal was a Middle East without Israel.
No Palestinian Currency — Because There Was No Palestinian State
One of the clearest markers of a functioning sovereign state is its currency. Every nation that has ever governed itself has issued its own money — a tangible, daily symbol of sovereignty, economic independence, and governmental authority. The so-called “Palestinian people” have never had a currency of their own. Not once. Not ever.
Under the Ottoman Empire, the region used the Ottoman lira. Under the British Mandate, the Palestinian pound was a British-administered colonial currency used by all residents — Jews and Arabs alike — not a Palestinian national currency. After 1948, residents of the West Bank used the Jordanian dinar, because they were under Jordanian rule. Residents of Gaza used the Egyptian pound, because they were under Egyptian military administration. After 1967, the Israeli shekel became the dominant currency. Following the Oslo Accords, the Palestinian Authority continued to use the Israeli shekel and the Jordanian dinar — it has never issued an independent Palestinian currency, because the Palestinian Authority is not a sovereign state and has never possessed the economic infrastructure of one.
Currency is the physical embodiment of statehood. The coin in your hand, the note in your wallet — these are instruments of national sovereignty. The fact that no Palestinian currency has ever existed in any era of history, under any form of Arab governance, is a clear and undeniable reflection of the fact that no Palestinian state has ever existed.
No Palestinian Language — Because It Is Arabic
A people defined by a distinct national identity typically possesses a distinct language — a tongue that sets them apart from neighboring peoples and carries their unique cultural heritage. Hebrew is the language of the Jewish people: ancient, documented, and continuously spoken in its various forms for three thousand years, revived as a modern vernacular in the 19th and 20th centuries, and today the official language of the State of Israel. What is the Palestinian language? The answer is: there is no Palestinian language. There never has been.
The Arab population of the Land of Israel speaks Arabic — the same language spoken by more than 420 million people across twenty-two Arab states stretching from Morocco to the Gulf. Arabic is not a Palestinian language. It is a pan-Arab language that predates the concept of “Palestinian” national identity by over a thousand years and is shared with every nation that rejected the existence of a Palestinian state when it mattered most. The dialect spoken by Arabs in the West Bank and Gaza is a variant of Levantine Arabic — linguistically indistinguishable in any meaningful sense from the Arabic spoken in Jordan, Syria, and Lebanon. It is not a separate language. It carries no unique vocabulary, no distinct grammatical structure, and no literary tradition that identifies it as the tongue of a distinct nation.
When a people claims ancient nationhood, the question of language is inseparable from the claim. The Scots have Gaelic. The Welsh have Welsh. The Basques have Euskara. The Hebrews have Hebrew. The “Palestinians” have Arabic — the lingua franca of a twenty-two-state Arab world that has perpetually denied them the statehood it claims to champion, choosing instead to weaponize their statelessness as a geopolitical instrument against Israel.
The Biblical Record and God’s Eternal Covenant
The historical record alone is sufficient to establish that there has never been a Palestinian Arab state. But for the Christian who stands with Israel, the historical record is reinforced by something infinitely more authoritative: the unambiguous, unconditional, eternal covenant of God. God did not give the Land of Israel to the descendants of Ishmael. He did not give it to a people invented in the 20th century for the political purpose of opposing Jewish sovereignty. He gave it to Abraham, confirmed it to Isaac, reaffirmed it to Jacob, and sealed it in blood and fire at Sinai.
“The Lord appeared to Abram and said, ‘To your offspring I will give this land’” (Genesis 12:7). “To your descendants I give this land, from the river of Egypt to the great river, the Euphrates” (Genesis 15:18). “He remembers His covenant forever, the promise He made for a thousand generations, the covenant He made with Abraham, the oath He swore to Isaac. He confirmed it to Jacob as a decree, to Israel as an everlasting covenant: ‘To you I will give the land of Canaan as the portion you will inherit’” (Psalm 105:8–11).
The prophets of Israel spoke of a day when God would restore His people to their land after exile — and that day has come. The establishment of the State of Israel in 1948, against every military and political probability, was not a geopolitical accident. It was the fulfillment of prophecy that had stood for two and a half millennia. Ezekiel 37 describes a valley of dry bones coming back to life — a vision of a nation destroyed and scattered that would be gathered and restored. Isaiah 11:11–12 speaks of God reaching out “a second time” to recover His people from the four corners of the earth. The Word of God does not recognize a Palestinian state because God gave the land to Israel — and He has not changed His mind.
Perspective
The claim that Israel is “occupying” a land that once belonged to a Palestinian state is not history. It is mythology — carefully constructed, relentlessly promoted, and utterly devoid of factual foundation. No Palestinian state has ever existed. No Palestinian currency has ever been minted. No Palestinian language has ever been spoken. No Palestinian government has ever governed. The so-called Palestinian national identity was explicitly described by one of its own senior architects as a political tool, invented for the purpose of opposing Israel, not for the purpose of building a nation.
The Christian who stands with Israel is not standing against the Arab people. He is standing for truth — which is the only foundation on which genuine peace can ever be built. He is standing for the integrity of the historical record, which has been systematically falsified in the service of a political agenda. And he is standing for the faithfulness of God, who made an everlasting covenant with the Jewish people concerning a specific land — a covenant that no emperor, no general, no international body, and no propaganda campaign has the authority to annul. “He will not violate His covenant or alter the word that went forth from His lips” (Psalm 89:34).