From the New York Times:
Israeli settlers have long asserted that the Palestinians are an invented people and that the West Bank’s real name is Judea and Samaria.
Statements of this kind tend to drive me up a wall. All nations are imaginary communities, all ethnic and national groups are invented, all places in the world are likely to have had a bizillion and one different names throughout history.
Saying this sort of thing is as idiotic as announcing with a look of somebody invested with a higher knowledge, “Did you hear? Those Palestinians have heads. That’s so freaky.” Of course, Palestinians have heads just like everyone else does but this inconvenient fact is omitted.
Every attempt of a nation-state (or an aspiring nation-state) to derive legitimacy from being less invented and less historically recent than somebody else are risible and doomed to failure.
This is the 21 century, people. The only way the nation-state can prove its legitimacy at this point is by offering a high standard of living to its citizens. Look at Syrians. They turn around and leave without any consideration for the national mythology of who lived where first, second and last. And they are absolutely right. Keeping people even somewhat attached is hard enough even for the nation-states that are offering a lot more than boring old fairy-tales of nationalism.
Clarissa's Blog 
All nationalities are “invented” in the sense that they didn’t exist until certain groups of people began to perceive themselves as a collective unit with common customs, language, etc., and then claimed territory, and came up with a name for their new nation-state such as “America” or “Germany.”
The problem with the term “Palestinians” (Note: I’m NOT takes sides here!) is this: Many of the national borders in the Middle East are fairly new, having been redrawn by the victorious colonial powers after the defeat of the Ottoman Empire in WWI. Then generic Islamic Arabs who had been part of that empire suddenly became “Syrians,” Libyans,” Jordanians,” and “Palestinians.”
When Israel was created in 1948, the Muslims in the Gaza Strip and West Bank weren’t commonly referred to as “Palestinians.” Jordan annexed the West Bank, in effect temporarily transforming the people in that section into “Jordanians.” Egypt took control of Gaza but didn’t accept the Arabs in it as Egyptians, instead treating them as refugees under military occupation.
It was only after Israel conquered the Gaza and West Bank in the 1967 war that Yasser Arafat popularized the term “Palestinian,” claiming a unique tribal identity for that select group of Islamic Arabs, along with their unique right to a very specific section of the Middle East, including ALL of the state of Israel. (The claim was amended to call for a “two-state solution” only after it became apparent that Israel could never be conquered.)
Some “Greater Israel” proponents in Israel call the West Bank “Judea and Samaria” because that area was part of the original Israeli state three thousand years ago, but the Israeli government doesn’t use those terms.
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There is not a single nation-state that didn’t undergo this process of invention. The only difference is that some nation-states were invented two seconds earlier than others. The place I live right now was not called USA 500 years ago and entirely different people inhabited the territory. Yet only the most confused dispute the legitimacy of the state today.
The earliest attempts to create nation-states only began in the 18th century. In historic terms, that’s nothing.
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That’s what I said in my first paragraph above. And I didn’t imply (or didn’t mean to) that it matters when a nation-state starts using the term — I’m merely pointing out the argument that one side in the conflict uses to call the Palestinians “invented.”
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Libya which was only nominally under Ottoman rule had already been conquered and colonized by Italy before World war One started.
About 25% of Palestinians were Christians in 1948.
The term Palestinian was widely used by the native Arab population during the Mandate period from 1918-1948. Even earlier there was a newspaper (founded in 1911) called Filasteen. There was a call for independence by the Syrian-Palestinian Conference in 1921. The PLO was founded in 1964 and used the term Palestinian because it was already popularly used. The idea that the name only became widely used by Arabs after 1967 is ludicrous.
A Palestinian sense of being distinct from other Arabs by virtue of living in what became the Palestinian Mandate in 1918 began with the revolt of 1834 against Egyptian rule.
But, aside from these factual errors you ignore the fact that Clarissa is right. It does not matter when a nation was invented and all nations are invented. It does not in anyway make the nation less real. There was no Ghanaian nation until recently either. In fact most nations are recent inventions.
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Where is my comment do I claim otherwise?
There are Arabs calling themselves Palestinians, but there is currently no Palestinian State, just as there was Zionists but no modern State of Israel until 1948.
Currently around 2% of the Palestinians in the occupied territories are Christian.
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Correction: “…were Zionists.” Sorry for the typo.
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“Look at Syrians. They turn around and leave without any consideration for the national mythology of who lived where first, second and last. And they are absolutely right. ”
I think you’re overlooking other collective identities. One of the reasons Syria become such a crap pit is that in a real sense there were no “Syrians” in Syria, that is who put their national identity first. And it’s not like they dont’ have collective identities they’re just smaller than countries. They’re Sunni, or Shia or Alawite or Christian or other. “Syria” only existed in opposition to other Arab or Muslim political entities.
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Nobody puts their national identity before material comfort any longer. And that’s precisely why the nation-state is doomed. But it’s the reality. People choose goodies over national identity every time. I did it twice and can’t be more content.
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This may be true for individuals, but at the nation-state level, the rulers in charge have very different ideas. Look what Putin is putting the Russian people through, for example, and the Palestinian people have long been used as pawns by their own leaders, and by the surrounding Arab nations in general.
Whether the nation-state division of the world is beneficial or evil, that division isn’t going away anytime soon. Its “doom” is a long way off.
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