Editing Palestinian identity (section)

==Denial of Palestinian identity==
{{further|A land without a people for a people without a land|l1="A land without a people for a people without a land"|There was no such thing as Palestinians|l2="There was no such thing as Palestinians"|Nakba denial|A History of the Palestinian People}}
Since the days of early [[Christian Zionism]], Palestinian identity has been the subject of dismissive rhetoric. The phrase "A land without a people for a people without a land" was used as early as 1843 by a [[Christian Zionism|Christian Restorationist]] clergyman, and the phrase continued to be used for almost a century predominantly by Christian Restorationists, and was later adopted as Jewish [[Zionist]] slogan, to an extent that historians dispute.<ref name="Muir">[[Diana Muir]], [http://www.meforum.org/article/1877 "A Land without a People for a People without a Land", ''Middle Eastern Quarterly'', Spring 2008, Vol. 15, No. 2]</ref><ref name="Jewcentricity">Garfinkle, Adam, ''Jewcentricity: Why the Jews Are Praised, Blamed, and Used to Explain Just About Everything'', John Wiley and Sons, 2009, p. 265.</ref><ref name=Shapira>{{Cite book|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=h4K06WBjCrAC&dq=%22a+land+without+a+people%22++anita+shapira&pg=PA42|title=Land and Power: The Zionist Resort to Force, 1881-1948|first=Anita|last=Shapira|date=28 February 1999|publisher=Stanford University Press|isbn=9780804737760 |via=Google Books}}</ref>

After the inception of the [[State of Israel]], a phrase that has similarly become oft repeated is [[Israeli Prime Minister]] [[Golda Meir]]'s remark that "There was no such thing as Palestinians. When was there an independent Palestinian people with a Palestinian state? It was either [[southern Syria]] before the First World War and then it was a Palestine including Jordan. It was not as though there was a Palestinian people in Palestine considering itself as a Palestinian people and we came and threw them out and took their country from them. They did not exist." as part of an interview with [[Frank Giles]], then deputy editor of ''[[The Sunday Times]]'' on June 15, 1969, to mark the second anniversary of the [[Six-Day War]]. It is considered to be the most famous example of Israeli denial of [[Palestinians|Palestinian identity]],<ref name=Waxman>{{cite book |last= Waxman |first= D. |title= The Pursuit of Peace and the Crisis of Israeli Identity: Defending/Defining the Nation |page= 50 |publisher= Palgrave Macmillan US |year= 2006 |isbn= 978-1-4039-8347-3 |url= https://books.google.com/books?id=oUHIAAAAQBAJ&pg=PA50 |access-date= 2021-11-22}}</ref> and has been frequently been used to illustrate the denial of Palestinian history and sum up the Palestinians' sense of invisibility to Israel.<ref name=Gelvin>{{cite book |last1= Gelvin |first1= J.L. |last2= Gelvin |first2= P.H.J.L. |title= The Israel-Palestine Conflict: One Hundred Years of War |publisher= Cambridge University Press |pages= 92–93 |year= 2005 |isbn= 978-0-521-85289-0 |url= https://books.google.com/books?id=wfIFVze1MqQC |access-date=2021-11-22}}</ref>

In 2023, [[Bezalel Smotrich]], the Minister of Finance in Israel's 2022 far-right coalition government, reiterated the denial of Palestinian identity.<ref>{{cite news |url=https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/mar/20/israeli-minister-condemned-claiming-no-such-thing-as-a-palestinian-people-bezalel-smotrich |title=
Israeli minister condemned for claiming ‘no such thing’ as a Palestinian people |date=20 March 2023 |work=Associated Press |publisher=The Guardian}}</ref>