Quotes denying Palestine

Many have denied Palestine throughout history. What most don’t know, is that it is the Arabs who were the first to deny it.

Quotes

• There is absolutely no such thing as Palestine in [Arab] history, absolutely not.
  • Arab historian Professor Philip Hitti, Testimony to the Anglo-American committee of inquiry. Quoted in Unholy War, p. 138.

• There is no such country [land] as Palestine! ...Palestine is a term the Zionists invented! ...There is no Palestine in the Bible. ‘Palestine’ is alien to us; it is the Zionists who introduced it.
  • Auni Bey Abdul-Hadi to the Peel Commission. Quoted in Unholy War, p. 142

• What you call Jordan is actually Palestine.
  • Yasser Arafat 1974, Quoted in Fast facts on the Middle East conflict, p. 142.

• The truth is that Jordan is Palestine and Palestine is Jordan.
  • King Hussein. Quoted in Unholy war, p. 142.

• How can people struggle for their nation, when most of them do not know the meaning of the word?...The people are in a great need of a ‘myth’ of imagination. The myth of nationality would create ‘identity’ and ‘self-respect’.
  • Musa Alami in “the lessons of Palestine”

• It never occurred to the people of Northern and Coastal Syria that Southern Syria (or Palestine) is anything but a part of Syria.
  • Palestinian Arabs congress in Damascus, 1920. Quoted in Greater Syria, p. 65.

• [Palestine] should be part of Southern Syria, provided the latter is not under foreign control
  • Muslim-Christian association, 1919. Greater Syria, p. 67.

• Palestine or Southern Syria-an integral part of the one and indivisible Syria-must not in any case or for any pretext be detached.
  • Arif Pasha ad-Dajjani. Quoted in Greater Syria, p. 67.

• had it not been for the Balfour Declaration and the terms of the mandate, Palestine would now be a Syrian province, as it used to be.
  • Fares Khouri to the UN general in 1947. Quoted in Israel and the Family of Nations, p. 38.

• Palestine and Transjordan are one, for Palestine is the coastline and Transjordan the hinterland of the same country.
  • King Abdullah. Quoted in A Clash of Destinies

• Southern Syria forms a part of the United Syria beginning from Taures [and extending to] Rafa, the separation of which we do not tolerate under any circumstances, and we are as well prepared to sacrifice ourselves towards its defense with all power.
  • Arab Club letter to the British. Quoted in Greater Syria, p. 59.

• We consider Palestine as part of Arab Syria, as it has never been separated from it at any time. We are connected with it by national, religious, linguistic, natural, economic, and geographical bonds.
  • Arab representatives to the Paris peace conference. Quoted in The Israeli-Palestinian Conflict (Oxford University Press)

• The inhabitants of southern Syria see themselves and their land as inseparable part of the rest of Syria.
  • Ibrahim Abd al-Hadi. Quoted in Greater Syria (Oxford University Press)