The nation that was invented

At the start of the 20th century, no country called Palestine existed on the map of the Ottoman Empire (nor had it ever before). There was the southern part of Syria, administratively subordinate to Damascus, and the coastal lands within Egypt’s sphere of influence.
In British Mandate documents, the Arab population of this territory was referred to simply as Arabs, without any ethnic clarification, such as “Palestinian.”

Even linguistics gives the truth away. The north speaks in Syrian dialects, the center in Jordanian, and the south and coast in Egyptian-Sinai Arabic.
Dialect researchers (Bergsträsser, Blanc, Holes) point out that local speech is a blend of neighboring dialects — it could not have formed within an ethnically closed nation. This is the speech of crossroads, of people who came from different directions.

The Arab elites of the Mandate period did not see themselves as Palestinians. The resolutions of the early Arab congresses of 1919–1920 explicitly referred to the territory as Southern Syria and demanded its inclusion in the Syrian state.
Gaza gravitated toward Egypt and lived under its economic influence, while the Bedouin tribes of the Negev were linked to Sinai and Transjordan.

Zionist repatriation changed everything. The Jewish aliyah brought capital, engineering education, hospitals, and power plants.
Factories and ports began to operate; kibbutzim, airlines, and irrigation projects appeared. British reports of the time spoke of a “new economy” that created thousands of jobs and attracted neighboring Arabs.
The Peel Commission Report (1937) acknowledged that Arab population growth was due to the influx of migrants drawn by the prosperity of the Jewish sector.

Demography supports that conclusion. In 1922, the British counted 590,000 Arabs.
By 1947, according to the UNSCOP Commission, there were 1.23 million, an annual growth of 2.6%, while Syria and Egypt of the time had no more than 1.8%.
The Hope-Simpson Report (1930) directly cited “significant illegal immigration across the northern border” and “Egyptian laborers in the south who settled in the Gaza area.”

In the demographic models of that era, such acceleration was impossible naturally.
Thus, a large part of the “local” Arabs of the 1940s were newcomers of the previous two decades. At least 170,000 people, by minimal estimates, arrived from Syria, Transjordan, and Egypt seeking a better life.

The Arab uprisings of 1920–1939 were not a reaction to “oppression,” but to modernization. The new economy shattered old hierarchies. Jerusalem’s Mufti, Haj Amin al-Husseini, turned fear of change into a political weapon. The riots of 1920 in Jerusalem, 1921 in Jaffa, 1929 in Hebron, and the 1936–1939 revolt were all fueled by his propaganda. The British Shaw Commission wrote of “religious-political incitement,” while the Peel Commission called the pogroms “an organized expression of fear of Jewish success.”

After defeat in the 1948 war, the same propaganda worked in reverse: “Leave until the Arab armies cleanse the land of Jews.” Hundreds of thousands left their towns, hoping to return after victory. The UN estimated the number of refugees at 711,000–750,000. If we exclude those who had arrived between 1920 and 1940, around 550,000–580,000 settled inhabitants remained — farmers, townspeople, Bedouins.
It was not deportation but escape from a war zone, driven by fear and false promises of Arab leaders.

UN General Assembly Resolution 302 (1949) created UNRWA—the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East. Its mission was temporary aid to those who “lost their homes and means of livelihood.” But within a few years, the agency fell into crisis. In the 1950s, funds ran short, Arab states refused to integrate the refugees, and donors were reluctant to continue financing. Reports of the UNRWA Commissioner (1954–1956) sound almost panicked: “resources are depleted, the legal definition of refugee status is uncertain.” The U.S. and Britain even discussed dissolving the agency.

To survive, UNRWA made a decision that changed the entire nature of the issue: the administration ruled that refugee status would be inherited through the male line “until a final goal is achieved.” Thus, a humanitarian mission turned into a bureaucratic machine. The 1951 Refugee Convention defines refugee status as individual and temporary, yet UNRWA created an exception never approved by the General Assembly. The result was explosive population growth: from 700,000 in 1949 to nearly six million today.
Forty percent of these people hold citizenship in other countries, but the agency still counts them as refugees.

With every new generation, the number of “victims of 1948” grows, and the narrative of suffering turns into an economic system where financial aid replaces professions and status replaces citizenship.

The comparison is unavoidable. In those same years, Israel absorbed around one million Jews expelled from Arab lands. No one called them “eternal refugees.” The state gave them citizenship, work, and education.
The Jews of Baghdad and Alexandria became the citizens of Haifa and Be’er Sheva. Palestinian camps became symbols of misery and ruin; Jewish towns grew into cities and agglomerations.

Today, many call the extension of Israeli law to Judea and Samaria an “annexation.” But annexation is possible only in regard to the sovereign territory of another state. After 1948, these lands had no recognized sovereign — Jordan’s 1950 annexation was acknowledged by only two countries. UN Security Council Resolution 242 (1967) calls for “secure and recognized boundaries,” not a return to the 1949 lines.
Legally, then, this is not annexation but the exercise of the right to security and the administration of a disputed territory without a lawful owner.

The 20th century was divided into two paths that began on the same land. One chose knowledge, labor, and science. Israel became a nation of engineers, doctors, and researchers. In seventy years, it turned swamps and deserts into centers of medicine, agritech, defense, and education—where value lies in what one creates.

The other chose fiction, propaganda, and terror. Instead of universities—UNRWA camps; instead of law—slogans. Where they could have built, they began to blow up. War became a profession, and refugee status—a hereditary title. The path of knowledge created life; the path of terror created an endless waiting for death.

This is not a struggle between two nations but between two civilizational principles: creation and destruction. History offered everyone a chance — but it was taken not by those who shouted the loudest, but by those who built.

Israel proved that even on sand and marshes, one can grow gardens — if one chooses work over myths and slogans. And perhaps, one day, those living in the shadow of old camps will understand that the path begins not with a weapon but with a book; not with a slogan but with work; not with a stone thrown at a car, but with a hand extended in greeting.