ABSTRACT
News reports give the impression that an Arab "Palestine" long existed at the eastern edge of the Mediterranean Sea, and that somehow Zionism is responsible for its disappearance. Similarly, outsiders are inclined to accept the oft-stated insistence that "Palestinians" constitute an ancient ethnicity. Muslim distaste for the notion of Palestine was evident in April 1920, when the British authorities carved out a Palestinian entity. The Muslim-Christian Association held a congress in January– February 1919 to draw up demands to submit to the Paris Peace Conference. The Congress passed four resolutions. The first of them noted that "it never occurred to the peoples of Northern and Coastal Syria that Southern Syria is anything but a part of Syria". The second called for an economic boycott of the Zionists in "all three parts of Syria". The third and fourth resolutions called for Palestine "not to be divided from Syria" and for "the independence of Syria within its natural borders".
