🤥 Before the British swept in, there was no Palestinian nation.

The land between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea, historically known as Palestine during the Islamic Golden Age (7th-13th centuries) and throughout the Ottoman period (14th-20th centuries), was acknowledged by Zionists as Palestine prior to 1948. In the formative years of Zionism, dating back to as early as 1840, Zionist proponents advocated for a Jewish return to ‘the land of Palestine’.

In the 18th century, Palestinians enjoyed significant autonomy and self-governance in historic Palestine. This era was catalyzed by the weakening of the Ottoman Empire and the region’s burgeoning commercial activity, particularly in cotton and grain trade. Between the early 1700s and 1776, Palestinians flourished under the autonomous rule of Zahir al-Umar, an Arab leader who governed northern Ottoman Palestine during that time.

The nation-state is a modern construct. Even if one were to argue that Palestine did not exist as a nation-state in the modern sense, it has been consistently inhabited by a native population identifying as Palestinian Arab, inclusive of Christians, Muslims, and Jews, throughout recorded history. Before the establishment of Israel in 1948, the territory between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea was recognized as Palestine, or Historic Palestine as it is known today, by historians spanning countless centuries.

The vast majority of natives inhabiting the land between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea can trace their ancestry, land, properties, villages, towns, and cities in Historic Palestine for centuries prior to the Nakba and the mass displacement of Palestinians from their land during and after the 1948 war, which led to the establishment of Israel.