After World War I, the name Palestine was applied to the territory that was placed under British Mandate; this area included not only present-day Israel but also present-day Jordan.
"They have said, Come, and let us cut them off from being a nation; that the name of Israel may be no more in remembrance." Psalm 83:4 (KJV)
There has never been a nation known as Palestine ever in the history of the world. Nations have governments, armies, currencies, laws and everything else. Palestine is the mythical "ghost nation" created by modern-day Muslims in an attempt to try and undo and destroy the legitimate Jewish state of Israel that has existed for the last 3,500 years.
So let's take a look at the origins of the word 'Palestine' and see if we can begin to make some sense out of it
Though the definite origins of the word "Palestine" have been debated for years and are still not known for sure, the name is
believed to be derived from the Egyptian and Hebrew word
peleshet. Roughly translated to mean "rolling" or "migratory," the term was used to describe the inhabitants of the land to the northeast of Egypt - the Philistines. The Philistines were an Aegean people - more closely related to the Greeks and with no connection ethnically, linguistically or historically with Arabia - who conquered in the 12th Century BC the Mediterranean coastal plain that is now Israel and Gaza.
There has never been a land called Palestine:
A derivative of the name 'Palestine' first appears in Greek literature in the 5th Century BC when the historian Herodotus called the area "Palaistinē" (Greek - Παλαιστίνη). In the 2nd century C, the Romans crushed the revolt of Shimon Bar Kokhba (132 AD), during which Jerusalem and Judea were regained and the area of Judea was renamed Palaestina in an attempt to minimize Jewish identification with the land of Israel.
Under the Ottoman Empire (1517-1917), the term Palestine was used as a general term to describe the land south of Syria; it was not an official designation. In fact, many Ottomans and Arabs who lived in Palestine during this time period referred to the area as "Southern Syria" and not as "Palestine."
After World War I, the name 'Palestine' was applied to the territory that was placed under British Mandate; this area included not only present-day Israel but also present-day Jordan.
Leading up to Israel's independence in 1948, it was common for the international press to label Jews, not Arabs, living in the mandate as Palestinians. It was not until years after Israeli independence that the Arabs living in the West Bank and Gaza Strip were called Palestinians.
The word Palestine or Filastin does not appear in the Koran. The term peleshet appears in the Jewish Tanakh no fewer than 250 times.
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