http://www.edmontonsun.com/2011/12/16/newts-unpopular-truth-palestine-wasnt-even-a-country-100-years-ago
Newt’s unpopular truth: Palestine wasn’t even a country 100 years ago
Newt Gingrich got into all sorts of trouble a few days ago when he claimed: “There was no Palestine as a state. It was part of the Ottoman Empire. We’ve had an invented Palestinian people who are in fact Arabs and who were historically part of the Arab community. And they had a chance to go many places.”
Newt, you’re completely correct, and this is one of the bravest and most intellectually informed things any of the Republican candidates have said so far.
Contrary to what you might hear from leftists, labour leaders, students and manipulative Arab activists carefully pulling on the emotional heart-strings of gullible westerners, the Palestinians as an identified group trace their ancestry not — as with the Jews — back thousands of years, but to 1920.
Until then, Arabs living in what we now know as Israel regarded themselves as Muslim or Christians, and not as Palestinians.
For centuries they had been subjects of the Ottoman Empire, and as Arabs did not recognize any particular national boundaries, and felt commonality with Muslims in Algeria or Yemen rather than Christians who lived in the next village.
Ottoman maps and records, and the writings of foreign travellers, do not speak of Palestine or Palestinians.