No state called Palestine

Gunvant Govindjee makes highly debatable points (“Defending the Indefensible,” April 18). However, when he refers to “historical Palestine”, the issues are no longer up for debate.

Since the expulsion of most of the Jewish population by Roman emperor Hadrian in the second century, numerous foreign empires have ruled the area. But since the end of the kingdom of Judaea there has not been a sovereign state in the area and certainly not one called “Palestine”.

After World War 1 and the establishment of the British mandate, the majority of the Arabs preferred to see themselves as part of “Greater Syria”. In 1947, on the expiry of the mandate, the Arab nations rejected the UN’s splitting of the area into independent Jewish and Arab states.

After the war that ensued, Egypt annexed Gaza and Jordan the West Bank (who protested over those “occupying powers”?). It was only in 1964, with the setting-up of the PLO, that the Arabs began defining themselves as “Palestinians” and claiming the entire area of the mandate (no “two-state” solutions there).

The question must be asked: is there a single coin, stamp or monument or any other symbol of Palestinian nationhood from before the founding of the state of Israel in 1948? It was only after the Jews returned to redeem the land that the Arab world began to lust after the territory, hitherto considered a provincial and desolate backwater.

Ironically, it was only after World War 1 when Zionist immigration and land development brought employment opportunities and improved quality of life that Arab emigrés began returning. The influx most surely was not because of a nationalist urge to establish a Palestinian homeland in the area Mark Twain, described in 1867 as having “withered

… fields and fettered … energies”.

Rowan Phillips Faerie Glen