The "Palestinian" identity is a veil, therefore an illusion

Submitted by Anon (Israel), Jan 11, 2017 at 16:01

I recall reading an interview, years ago, with one of the Hamas leaders in which he explained that a Palestinian state is an interim step and that they would seek to be part of a larger Arab state. He asserted that to remain independent is to claim that Palestinians are distinct from other Arabs, which isn't the case. I reread that sentence over and over.
He went on to say Hamas thinks Arab countries should merge.
He also explained looking further into the future all Muslims are part of the Muslim nation which should be one state and expressed Hamas's wish for a caliphate.
This was in the early 2000's.

For that matter, there's also a video of Haniyah reminding Arabs that "Palestinians" are Arabs who came to the land from various Arab countries, "half of them from Egypt and half from 'Saudi Arabia'".
This was his way of complaining about Saudi Arabia's and Egypt's hostile stance towards the Hamas war of 2014.

A veil is as real as a face, but it is still only a veil. Muslims and people in the West sometimes imagine that Palestinians are an ethnic group, like Kurds. Of course, were they to be an ethnic group then all of Jordan's citizens would be "ethnic Palestinians", not only the roughly half which are considered Palestinian, since they all (or almost all) are descendants of Arabs living in the territory previously called Palestine. No one seriously asserts that before Jordan was created, when it was all Palestine, the Arabs on the territory later to be called Jordan were one distinct people and that the Arabs on the other part (Israel+West Bank) were another distinct people, two 'nations' as it were.

Note: Opinions expressed in comments are those of the authors alone and not necessarily those of Daniel Pipes. Original writing only, please. Comments are screened and in some cases edited before posting. Reasoned disagreement is welcome but not comments that are scurrilous, off-topic, commercial, disparaging religions, or otherwise inappropriate. For complete regulations, see the "Guidelines for Reader Comments".