Historical Palestine Yesterday and Today by Ilan Pappé

There is a country named Palestine, and it has been referred to as Palestine for many centuries. The Romans already used a version of that name, as did the Byzantines, who replaced them, and the Islamic empire that by the seventh century took over Palestine and used the term “Jund Filastin” to name the district that today is Palestine. From the sixteenth century onward, people in the West and in the Arab and Muslim worlds related to the land as Palestine. Thus, there is a centuries-long history of a geographical place called Palestine, where different political formations appeared over the years. The people living there, be they Christians, Jews, or Muslims, were Palestinians.

When Western academia, media, and political elites refer to “Palestine,” they mean the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. When they refer to the Palestinians, they mean those living in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. This is a distortion not only from a moral or political point of view but also from an academic and scholarly point of view.

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