What changed in 1948?
The Jews stopped being Palestinians.
May 14, 1948. Ben-Gurion reads the Declaration of Independence. The next morning, the residents of the Yishuv wake up as Israelis. The label they'd carried for decades was simply vacated.
The Palestine Post → Jerusalem Post (1950).
Palestine Symphony Orchestra → Israel Philharmonic.
Palestine Electric Company → Israel Electric Corporation.
Anglo-Palestine Bank → Bank Leumi le-Israel.
Palestine pound → Israeli lira.
Jewish Agency for Palestine → just the Jewish Agency.
"Palestinian" passports → Israeli ones.
Within 24 months, "Palestinian" had been stripped off every Jewish institution that had worn it.
Now the Arab side. Arabs did not rush to claim the empty label in 1948. They didn't claim it for another generation.
In 1948, the Arabs who fled or remained still called themselves Arabs. The Arab League's war wasn't fought in the name of "Palestine" as a nation. It was fought to prevent partition and absorb the territory into existing Arab states. Transjordan took the West Bank and East Jerusalem and in 1950 simply annexed them; the residents became Jordanian citizens with Jordanian passports. Egypt took Gaza and ran it under military administration. No citizenship, no nation, no "Palestine."
The one institutional use of "Palestinian" that survived 1948 was a refugee category: UNRWA, created December 1949, defined "Palestine refugees" as a humanitarian classification. Not a nationality. It kept the word alive in international bureaucratic language while the Arab world itself wasn't using it nationally.
Then came the long appropriation.
1964. Nasser sponsors the founding of the PLO in Cairo. The original charter (Article 24) explicitly disclaims any sovereignty over the West Bank, Gaza, or the Himmah area. Read that again. The founding document of the Palestine Liberation Organization renounces claims to the West Bank and Gaza. Because in 1964, those were Arab lands belonging to Jordan and Egypt.
The PLO's purpose was to liberate the part Israel held, not those parts.
1967. Israel takes the West Bank and Gaza in six days. Suddenly Jordan and Egypt no longer hold the territory, and the Arab residents there are no longer Jordanians or under Egyptian rule. The pan-Arab framework had just been humiliated on the battlefield. A new identity was needed.
1968. The PLO charter is rewritten. Article 24's disclaimer disappears. The West Bank and Gaza are now central to Palestinian national claims. The label has been fully transferred.
Sequence:
1917–1948: "Palestinian" = Jewish institutions and self-identification; Arabs reject the term and call themselves Arabs / Southern Syrians.
1948: Jews drop the label and become Israelis. The word goes dormant on the Arab side, surviving mainly as a UN refugee category.
1948–1967: Arabs in the West Bank are Jordanians. Arabs in Gaza are stateless subjects of Egyptian military rule. "Palestinian" is not yet a national identity.
1964–1968: The PLO transitions the label into a national identity but only after 1967 makes pan-Arabism politically untenable.
1948 didn't create a Palestinian Arab nation. It vacated a Jewish label and left a 20-year identity gap that Arab nationalism took until 1968 to fill.
The Jews stopped being Palestinians.
May 14, 1948. Ben-Gurion reads the Declaration of Independence. The next morning, the residents of the Yishuv wake up as Israelis. The label they'd carried for decades was simply vacated.
The Palestine Post → Jerusalem Post (1950).
Palestine Symphony Orchestra → Israel Philharmonic.
Palestine Electric Company → Israel Electric Corporation.
Anglo-Palestine Bank → Bank Leumi le-Israel.
Palestine pound → Israeli lira.
Jewish Agency for Palestine → just the Jewish Agency.
"Palestinian" passports → Israeli ones.
Within 24 months, "Palestinian" had been stripped off every Jewish institution that had worn it.
Now the Arab side. Arabs did not rush to claim the empty label in 1948. They didn't claim it for another generation.
In 1948, the Arabs who fled or remained still called themselves Arabs. The Arab League's war wasn't fought in the name of "Palestine" as a nation. It was fought to prevent partition and absorb the territory into existing Arab states. Transjordan took the West Bank and East Jerusalem and in 1950 simply annexed them; the residents became Jordanian citizens with Jordanian passports. Egypt took Gaza and ran it under military administration. No citizenship, no nation, no "Palestine."
The one institutional use of "Palestinian" that survived 1948 was a refugee category: UNRWA, created December 1949, defined "Palestine refugees" as a humanitarian classification. Not a nationality. It kept the word alive in international bureaucratic language while the Arab world itself wasn't using it nationally.
Then came the long appropriation.
1964. Nasser sponsors the founding of the PLO in Cairo. The original charter (Article 24) explicitly disclaims any sovereignty over the West Bank, Gaza, or the Himmah area. Read that again. The founding document of the Palestine Liberation Organization renounces claims to the West Bank and Gaza. Because in 1964, those were Arab lands belonging to Jordan and Egypt.
The PLO's purpose was to liberate the part Israel held, not those parts.
1967. Israel takes the West Bank and Gaza in six days. Suddenly Jordan and Egypt no longer hold the territory, and the Arab residents there are no longer Jordanians or under Egyptian rule. The pan-Arab framework had just been humiliated on the battlefield. A new identity was needed.
1968. The PLO charter is rewritten. Article 24's disclaimer disappears. The West Bank and Gaza are now central to Palestinian national claims. The label has been fully transferred.
Sequence:
1917–1948: "Palestinian" = Jewish institutions and self-identification; Arabs reject the term and call themselves Arabs / Southern Syrians.
1948: Jews drop the label and become Israelis. The word goes dormant on the Arab side, surviving mainly as a UN refugee category.
1948–1967: Arabs in the West Bank are Jordanians. Arabs in Gaza are stateless subjects of Egyptian military rule. "Palestinian" is not yet a national identity.
1964–1968: The PLO transitions the label into a national identity but only after 1967 makes pan-Arabism politically untenable.
1948 didn't create a Palestinian Arab nation. It vacated a Jewish label and left a 20-year identity gap that Arab nationalism took until 1968 to fill.
https://x.com/khalidi79397/status/2058420472979607900
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