The Arab Rejection of Palestine

They were offered a homeland. They chose war. Decades later, the world is asked to mourn a state they refused to build. This is the story of identity denied, opportunities wasted, and a narrative rewritten.

Arab Higher Committee representative Awni Abdulhadi

The most overlooked truth in the Israel-Palestine debate is that the only people who have consistently denied a Palestinian state are the Arab Palestinians themselves. Long before Israel was declared, Arab leaders in the region did not embrace a distinct Palestinian identity. In 1937, when the British Peel Commission investigated the growing conflict in Mandatory Palestine, Arab Higher Committee representative Awni Abdulhadi declared, “There is no such country as Palestine. ‘Palestine’ is a term the Zionists invented. Our country was, for centuries, part of Syria.” That admission alone unravels the myth of an ancient, sovereign Palestinian Arab nation denied its rights.

At the time, the label “Palestinian” was a British-imposed administrative term that applied to everyone in the territory, including Jews. Jewish newspapers, like the Palestine Post, bore the name. Jewish athletes competed under the name “Palestine.” Identity papers and passports issued by the British Mandate listed Jews as Palestinian. In fact, before 1948, the term “Palestinian” was more commonly used to refer to Jews than to Arabs. Ironically, Jews embraced a Palestinian identity under British rule while many Arabs denied it.

Then came the UN Partition Plan in 1947. It offered both peoples a state. The Palestinian Jews said yes. The Arab Palestinians said no and chose war instead. Along with five neighboring Arab nations, Arab Palestinian leadership aimed not for a state of their own but to destroy the one offered to the Jews. That war was lost. So was land. Yet the narrative that followed ignored who initiated the violence and instead painted Arab Palestinians as victims of decisions they themselves made.

Decade after decade, Arab Palestinian leadership has repeated this pattern. In 1967, after another war they supported and lost, they were offered peace and recognition. They refused. In 2000, Israel offered over 90 percent of the West Bank, all of Gaza, and shared control of East Jerusalem. Yasser Arafat rejected it. In 2008, another generous offer came. It was rejected again. At each critical moment, Arab Palestinians chose resistance over responsibility.

Even when Israel withdrew entirely from Gaza in 2005, removing all settlers and military presence, instead of building a functioning state, Hamas seized power and turned it into a launching ground for terror. Billions in foreign aid were funneled into rockets, tunnels, and militant propaganda. Civilians were used as shields, children were indoctrinated, and criticism of leadership was silenced. Not a single democratic election has been held in Gaza since Hamas took over.

And then came October 7, 2023. Hamas terrorists crossed into Israel and brutally slaughtered over 1,200 people, including children, families, festival-goers, and the elderly. Across parts of Gaza, people celebrated in the streets, handing out sweets, cheering, and praising the “martyrs” of the attack. Later, when Iran fired missiles at Israel, thousands again cheered from rooftops and streets, glorifying destruction while civilians in Israel ran to bomb shelters.

Yet when Israel responded, when it defended itself, when it struck back at terror infrastructure embedded in civilian areas, those same crowds cried victimhood. They demanded sympathy from the very world they had mocked days earlier. They showed no remorse for the civilians they murdered, yet expected international pity when they bore the consequences of their own violence.

And all of this has unfolded under the shadow of slogans like “From the river to the sea” and “Death to the IDF.” These are not peaceful calls for justice or coexistence. They are calls for the total annihilation of Israel and its people. The goal is not a two-state solution. It is the erasure of one state, the Jewish one.

This has always been the way. Antisemitic conspiracy theories, like the kind spread in Tsarist Russia and Nazi Germany, have long been used as propaganda tools to justify hostility towards Jews. Today, those same lies have been rebranded and redirected at Israel. Accusations of global control, manipulation, or bloodlust are now framed as political critique, but the intention remains the same, to demonise Jews, to isolate them, and to justify their destruction.

The Arab Palestinians lost land, time, lives, and legitimacy, and they blame everyone but themselves. Yet everywhere you hear chants of “Free Palestine,” while those same crowds condemn British colonialism. What they ignore is that the very word “Palestine” was popularised by the British. It was never the name of a sovereign country. It was an imposed term, not an indigenous Arab national identity. This is why education matters, and why most pro-Palestinian arguments collapse under basic historical scrutiny.

This is one of the greatest gaslights in modern geopolitics. A people offered statehood who chose war. A leadership that glorified terror and then claimed innocence. A movement that refused peace and now insists they were denied justice. It is a distortion of truth so complete that many no longer question the timeline of events or who turned down what.

The truth is clear. Arab Palestinians had multiple chances to build something real. Jewish Palestinians did, they built Israel. Most of the Arab Palestinians, who didn’t build along side the Jews, rejected every opportunity they were given. They denied their own identity when it was offered. They chose conflict over coexistence.

Until that history is acknowledged, peace will remain out of reach. Sympathy cannot be a one-way street. If you celebrate the killing of children, you forfeit the right to claim the moral high ground. If you reject your own state, you cannot spend generations pretending it was stolen from you.

The path to justice begins with honesty. And the historical record is not on the side of those who erased their own opportunity, then demanded the world pretend they never had one. The “Free Palestine” movement is not about liberation. It is an antisemitic campaign to eradicate Jews, cloaked in anti-imperial slogans and historical distortions and revisionism. Behind its rhetoric of resistance lies a rejection of coexistence, not occupation and most certainly not Palestinian self-determination.