Even before the end of Ottoman administration, Palestine, rather than the Ottoman Empire, was considered by some Palestinians to be their country. One of the earliest Palestinian newspapers,
Filastin founded in
Jaffa in 1911 by Issa al-Issa, addressed its readers as "Palestinians".
[9] Evidence of Palestinian conceptions of Palestine as a distinct country within the Ottoman Empire can be found in another Palestinian newspaper,
al-Karmel, which on
25 July 1913, wrote: "This team possessed tremendous power; not to ignore that Palestine, their country, was part of the Ottoman Empire."
[10]
The idea of a unique and separate Palestinian state was at first rejected by most Palestinians. The First Congress of Muslim-Christian Associations (in
Jerusalem, February 1919), which met for the purpose of selecting a Palestinian Arab representative for the
Paris Peace Conference, adopted the following resolution: "We consider Palestine as part of Arab Syria, as it has never been separated from it at any time. We are connected with it by national, religious,
linguistic, natural, economic and geographical bonds."
[11]
After the fall of the
Ottoman Empire and the French conquest of
Syria, however, the notion took on greater appeal. In 1920, for instance, the formerly pan-Syrianist
mayor of Jerusalem,
Musa Qasim Pasha al-Husayni, said "Now, after the recent events in
Damascus, we have to effect a complete change in our plans here. Southern Syria no longer exists. We must defend Palestine".
Similarly, the Second Congress of Muslim-Christian Associations (December 1920), passed a resolution calling for an independent Palestine; they then wrote a long letter to the
League of Nations about "Palestine, land of Miracles and the supernatural, and the cradle of religions", demanding, amongst other things, that a "National Government be created which shall be responsible to a
Parliament elected by the Palestinian People, who existed in Palestine before the war."
Conflict between Palestinian nationalists and various types of
pan-Arabists continued during the British Mandate, but the latter became increasingly marginalised. The most prominent leader of the Palestinain nationalists was
Mohammad Amin al-Husayni, Grand Mufti of Jerusalem. By 1937, only one of the many Arab political parties in Palestine (the Istiqlal party) promoted political absorption into a greater Arab nation as its main agenda. During World War II, al-Husayni maintained close relations with
Nazi officials seeking German support for an independent Palestine.
[citation needed] However, the
1948 Arab-Israeli War resulted in those parts of Palestine which were not part of Israel being occupied by Egypt and Jordan.
The idea of an independent nationality for Palestinian Arabs was greatly boosted by the
1967 Six Day War in which these lands were conquered by Israel; instead of being ruled by different Arab states encouraging them to think of themselves as Jordanians or Egyptians, those in the West Bank and Gaza were now ruled by a state with no desire to make them think of themselves as Israelis, and an active interest in discouraging them from regarding themselves as Egyptians, Jordanians, or Syrians.
[citation needed]
Moreover, the natives of the
West Bank and the
Gaza Strip now shared many interests and problems in common with each other that they did not share with the neighboring countries.
