The Romans had changed the name of the Land of Israel to ?Palestine.? But from A.D. 640 until the 1960s, Arabs referred to this same Land as ?Southern Syria.? Arabs only started calling the Land ?Palestine? in the 1960s. Until about the eighteenth century, the Christian world called this same Land, ?The Holy Land.? Thereafter, they used two names: ?The Holy Land? and ?Palestine.? When the League of Nations in 1922 gave Great Britain the mandate to prepare Palestine as a national home for the Jewish people, the official name of the Land became ?Palestine? and remained so until the rebirth of the Israeli State in 1948. During this very period, the leaders of the Arabs in the Land, however, called themselves Southern Syrians and clamored that the Land become a part of a ?Greater Syria.? This ?Arab Nation? would include Syria, Lebanon, Iraq, Transjordan as well as Palestine. An observation in TIME magazine (January 3, 1994) well articulated how the Palestinian identity was born so belatedly in the 1960s:
Golda Meir once argued that there was no such thing as a Palestinian; at the time, she wasn?t entirely wrong. Before Arafat began his proselytizing, most of the Arabs from the territory of Palestine thought of themselves as members of an all-embracing Arab nation. It was Arafat who made the intellectual leap to a definition of the Palestinians as a distinct people; he articulated the cause, organized for it, fought for it and brought it to the world?s attention?
Golda Meir once argued that there was no such thing as a Palestinian; at the time, she wasn?t entirely wrong. Before Arafat began his proselytizing, most of the Arabs from the territory of Palestine thought of themselves as members of an all-embracing Arab nation. It was Arafat who made the intellectual leap to a definition of the Palestinians as a distinct people; he articulated the cause, organized for it, fought for it and brought it to the world?s attention?
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