cmv: the modern “palestinian” borders and defined identity only exist because of zionist lobbying and european powers drawing lines

under the ottomans there was no single province called “palestine”. rhe galilee and northern towns were part of the vilayet of beirut, whilst the south was under the “jerusalem mutasarrifate”, including the entirety of gaza. politically and administratively, there was no one “palestine”. culturally the galilee was basically continuous with southern lebanon. there were even nine shia villages in the galilee before 48. beyond here there were practically no shias in the rest of palestine whilst southern lebanon had a large population of shias. for the people living here the line that would later become the northern border of israel/palestine didn’t exist at all. also a lot of the land in the galilee was owned the sursock family, a wealthy lebanese christian family from beirut, who were absentee landlords (the sursocks would later sell significant portions of this land to the jewish national fund and other zionist organizations in the 20s and 30s)

the borders weren’t drawn first and then zionism happened. it was the reverse. after world war 1 the french wanted the galilee as part of their mandate for syria. the british had promised that they’d create a “jewish national home” in the land that they controlled, so zionist leaders lobbied hard to make sure that the galilee would be included in the land that the british would control, and not in the hands of the french who had no reason or obligation to help create a jewish state. this desire was probably for strategic reasons and also cultural, since tiberias and tzfat are two out of the four most holy cities in judaism and are in the galilee. some zionist leaders even proposed pushing the border until the litani which is well into modern day lebanon. basically the mandate itself was basically created to fulfill the british promise to the zionists. not to administer a “palestinian” region. the final borders were drawn to satisfy zionist goals.

my point is that if the british succeeded with their negotiations with the french and the south of lebanon was included in their mandate and later incorporated partially into the jewish state, the people of southern lebanon would identify as palestinian today. and if the british didn’t succeed in their negotiations about the galilee and it was taken by the french in their mandate for syria, those people who call themselves palestinian today would call themselves lebanese (or even syrian idk).

without zionism and the british promise, the people of the galilee could easily have ended up lebanese or syrian and the mandate’s northern border would have looked totally different. the modern “palestinian” identity and its borders only really crystallized in response to zionist lobbying and european power politics, not because the land was ever a single political or cultural unit before the 20th century.

btw before anyone starts this does not mean i justify any of the things the palestinian people have suffered for the past 80 years or even deny their modern identity, just saying that their identity is largely due to the people who have caused their suffering.