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Source: http://www.palwatch.org/main.aspx?fi=157&doc_id=24145
PA Historian: 100 Years Ago "There Was Nothing Called a Palestinian People"
(Palestinian Media Watch) Itamar Marcus and Maurice Hirsch - Mahmoud Abbas, Chairman of the Palestinian Authority, published an op-ed in the British Guardian on Nov. 1 describing the Palestinian people as "a proud nation with a rich heritage of ancient civilizations." On the same day, official PA TV broadcast an interview with historian Abd Al-Ghani Salameh, who explained that in 1917 there was no Palestinian people. "Before the Balfour Promise [Declaration] when the Ottoman rule ended, Palestine's political borders as we know them today did not exist, and there was nothing called a Palestinian people with a political identity as we know today." "Palestine's lines of administrative division... included Jordan and southern Lebanon, and like all peoples of the region, [the Palestinians] were liberated from Turkish rule and immediately moved to colonial rule, without forming a Palestinian people's political identity."