An “Invented People” Ctd

Goldblog insists that Palestinians exist. Noah Millman puts the debate in perspective:

When people say that the Palestinians “are just Arabs” they are on one level correct. In 1900, before Palestinian Arabic could have been influenced by Hebrew, the Arabic spoken by a citizen of Haifa would have been extremely similar to the Arabic spoken by a citizen of Damascus. “Palestinians are just Arabs” is as historically and ethnologically correct as “Palestine is just part of Greater Syria” – which, at various points in history, has in fact been the Syrian perspective on the matter.

And, on another level, it’s obviously incorrect. The Arabs of Palestine had the nationalizing experience of reacting to Jewish colonization of their country – country in the French sense of “native land” rather than “state”. That experience was foreign to the otherwise-similar population in Syria, and resulted in a distinct identity.

Jonathan Zasloff makes related points:

You don’t need Gingrich to tell you that the idea of a “Palestinian people” is relatively new.  All you need is the foremost historian of the idea, Columbia’s Rashid Khalidi, to confirm it.  In his (very good) book Palestinian Identity: The Construction of Modern National Consciousness, Khalidi puts the crystallization of the idea slightly after 1908, the year of the Young Turk revolt in Istanbul.  That event, Khalidi argues, catalyzed the Arabs in what is now known as Palestine to reconsider their allegiance to Ottoman Sultan (also the holder of the Caliphate), and begin to think in more nationalistic terms.  (For Khalidi, this timing is important because it allows him to argue that Palestinian Identity did not arise simply as a reaction to the Balfour Declaration and the beginnings of mass Jewish migration).

Earlier thoughts here.

(Photo: A protester with the Palestinain flag painted on her cheek takes part in a sit-in in Sweimeh, a few kilometres from the Israeli-occupied West Bank, to commemorate the 64th anniversary of the partition of Palestine on November 25, 2011. By Khalil Mazraawi/AFP/Getty Images)