As a child in Paris, where I grew up in the 1970s, and in Israel, where I vacationed, I often heard that the Palestinian people did not exist. According to this narrative, on the territory of the British Mandate of Palestine, alongside a Jewish minority, lived people – some of them rather nomadic (the Bedouins), others indistinguishable from various Arab populations of the region – but nothing resembling a Palestinian people, a Palestinian nation.

One day, in 1948, this territory had been partitioned by the United Nations (UN) between Jews and Arabs. The local Arabs and neighboring countries had then declared war on Israel, whose existence they refused to accept. It was to their detriment as they lost this war, then others, along with territories. Since then, the Arabs of the former British Mandate of Palestine were mainly living in other Arab countries, some in Gaza and the West Bank, others in Israel among Jews.

But there could not be a Palestinian problem because there were no Palestinians. This was, according to this narrative, a pure invention intended to justify the claim for an Arab state in place of Israel. Moreover, despite grand declarations, there was an evident indifference of the Arab states toward the fate of refugee populations from Palestine, sometimes even hostility. As if these people disturbed everyone, had no place anywhere and were not considered and respected by anyone, except as a symbol of a Jewish, Western, neocolonial presence in the Middle East.

A difficult mutual recognition

As a teenager, this last point struck me. Apart from reminding me of the history of the people I come from, isn't a population that has nowhere to go and disturbs everyone undeniably a group? Evidently, this population shared a common destiny, at least of living in a foreign land as refugees or at home under the domination of another power. The myth of an Arab population, merely originating from arbitrary borders, shattered against the evidence of a shared history and condition. Whatever the date and circumstances of its birth, the Palestinian population was a reality.

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