“There Has Never Been a State Named ‘Palestine'”

Over the past two weeks, I have participated in numerous podcast episodes on Arabic-language YouTube channels. The discussions focused almost exclusively on the Arab-Israeli conflict. There, I continued to shed light on the most sensitive and controversial aspects of this conflict the very same issues I began addressing following the terrorist attacks carried out by Hamas on October 7, 2023, against innocent Israeli civilians.

These positions provoked widespread campaigns of defamation, hatred, and incitement against me in the Egyptian and Qatari media. Yet, this has not and will not affect my conviction: the priority is to convey the facts with the utmost neutrality. My writings aim to illuminate the reader on the deeper dimensions of a conflict whose reverberations reach us here in Sweden, where some cities and regions sometimes appear more part of the Middle East than of Northern Europe.

One of the most emotionally charged issues is the so-called “Palestinian state.” However, a return to historical sources and available documents reveals a much simpler reality than is often portrayed: there has never existed, in any historical period, an independent sovereign state called Palestine.

“The Name and Its Origin… Where Confusion Begins”

The Philistines (with a “T”) came from the Greek island of Crete to the coastal region during the twelfth century BCE. At that time, the area was known as the Kingdom of Judah.

Later, Shimon Bar Kokhba (killed around 135 CE) led the Jewish revolt against the Roman Empire between 132 and 136 CE. Initially, he succeeded in establishing an independent Jewish state that lasted three years before the Romans crushed the revolt and killed him in the fortified city of Betar.

Following the revolt, Emperor Hadrian conducted a wide-scale punitive campaign against the Jews and renamed the province of Judah to Syria Palaestina, while the city of Jerusalem was renamed Aelia Capitolina.

The Ottoman and then British Rule… No State Named Palestine

After the Battle of Marj Dabiq (1516), the Ottomans defeated the Mamluks, and the region came under Ottoman rule from 1517 to 1917, a full four centuries without any independent political entity called Palestine.

To clarify further: the two main proposals for resolving the conflict the British Peel Commission report of 1937 and the United Nations General Assembly Partition Plan of 1947 explicitly referred to two states, one Jewish and one Arab, without mentioning any “Palestinian state,” for the simple reason that it did not exist.

The British Mandate lasted twenty-eight years, beginning on April 25, 1920, following the Allied decision at the San Remo conference, coming into official effect on September 29, 1923, and ending on May 14, 1948, with the British withdrawal. During this period, the British administered the area solely according to colonial considerations, not on the basis of any alleged “Palestinian state.”

When Did the Alleged State Appear? The Answer Is Simple: It Never Did

In this context, it is worth noting: in Surah Al-Ma’idah, verse 21, the Prophet Moses (peace be upon him) addresses the Children of Israel, urging them to enter the Holy Land that God had decreed for them. Regardless of theological interpretations, it is historically certain that this verse links the land to the Jewish people unequivocally.

To all those demanding a Palestinian state… on what legal or historical basis?

Which reference do you rely upon? At no point in history did an independent state named Palestine exist. So how is a “state” demanded as if it were a gift for a holiday or a goodwill gesture at an international summit?

And if we examine Hamas’s rule in Gaza, which began after its armed takeover of Fatah on June 14, 2007, what kind of “state” emerged? Over 18 years, the region became an environment flourishing with dozens of armed groups, whose stated goal, according to their charters, is the destruction of Israel.

Conclusion

History does not grant legitimacy to those who never had their own state, and no theocratic militia can create a state simply by deciding to do so.

It is the facts, not emotions, that redefine this conflict. Without confronting these facts, the debate will remain an endless cycle.

The crucial question, then, is: should the future be built on political myths or on historical truth?

Denying facts does not eliminate them; it merely exposes the depth of the intellectual crisis that has plagued Arab discourse for decades.

Important Note: This article was first published in Swedish a few days ago, specifically on Friday, December 5, 2025, in the newspaper Bulletin.

After its publication, it ranked among the most-read articles. It is published here exclusively in English.