From Yoram Ettinger's piece:
"Palestine" is a derivative of the Hebrew term "Plishtim” (invaders), the Biblical name of the Philistines, non-Semites from the Greek islands and from Phoenicia, who migrated in the 12th century BCE to Pleshet, along the Mediterranean. The term "Palestine" was established, in the 5th century BC, by the Greek historian, Herodotus, and adopted in 135 AD, by the Roman Empire, in an attempt to erase "Judaea" from human memory.
According to Prof. Bernard Lewis, the icon of Mid-East historians (International History Review, January, 1980), "the earliest attempts at a territorial definition of the country later known as Palestine are in the Bible.” In its attempts to devastate Jewish national aspirations, the Roman Empire attached Palestine to the province of Syria. In 400 AD, Palestine was split into Palestina Prima – with its capital in Caesarea – and Palestina Secunda – with its capital in Bethshean, further diminishing the stature of Jerusalem.
Prof. Lewis notes that the 7th century Arab conquest of Palestine perpetuated the neglect of Jerusalem, while elevating the status of Lydda, Ramla and Tiberias. "In the early medieval Arabic usage, Filastin [Palestine] and Urdunn [Jordan] were sub-districts forming part of the greater geographical entity known as Syria…. Under Roman, Byzantine and Islamic rule, Palestine was politically submerged. It reappeared only under the Crusaders…. the Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem….
"Under the successors of Saladin, and still more under the Mamluks, the country was redistributed in new territorial units … with its capital in Damascus…. After the Ottoman conquest in 1516-17, the country was divided into Ottoman administrative districts... subject to the authority of the Governor-General of Damascus....
"[The term Palestine] was no longer used by Muslims, for whom it had never meant more than an administrative sub-district and it had been forgotten even in that limited sense….
And from Martin Sherman's piece
Even the Palestinians’ own “National Charter” reveals that they are not — and do not see themselves — as a genuinely distinct people or a cohesive nation, with a coherently defined homeland. Thus the Palestinians not only affirm that their national demands are bogus, but that they are merely a temporary ruse meant to annul what they term “the illegal 1947 partition of Palestine” (i.e. Israel in its entirety...How is any fair-minded person to avoid concluding that at a later stage there will be no need to preserve their identity or to develop consciousness thereof?...Significantly, the urge for Palestinian sovereignty only seems to arise in response to the manifestation of Jewish sovereignty...Palestinians did not object to almost two decades of Jordanian and Egyptian authority, nor does the solid Palestinian majority in Jordan today seem highly motivated to express its distinct “national identity.”
Read it all.
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