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There was no such thing as Palestinians is the first line of a widely repeated statement by the then-newly appointed Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir in 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 Palestinian identity.

The quote has been frequently used to illustrate Israel’s denial of Palestinian history, and is considered to sum up the Palestinians’ sense of victimization by Israel. It is considered to be a successor to the early Zionist phrase A land without a people for a people without a land.

Edward Said described it as Golda Meir's "most celebrated remark", whilst Al Jazeera wrote that "Meir’s jingoistic comments concerning Palestinians remain one of her defining – and most damning – legacies."

Interview

• Frank Giles: Do you think the emergence of the Palestinian fighting forces, the Fedayeen, is an important new factor in the Middle East?

• Golda Meir: Important, no. A new factor, yes. 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.

In a 1972 interview with the New York Times, Meir was asked if she stood by the comments; she replied: "I said there never was a Palestinian nation".

Barbara McKean Parmenter reflected on the statement in its wider context:

In one sense she was right. There was no Palestine in the Western sense of a nation-state and no Palestinian people in the Western sense of a national group taking explicit possession of and improving its national territory. By Western definition, Palestinians, like many other native peoples around die world, did not exist.

References

1. Waxman, D. (2006). The Pursuit of Peace and the Crisis of Israeli Identity: Defending/Defining the Nation. Palgrave Macmillan US. p. 50. ISBN 978-1-4039-8347-3. Retrieved 2021-11-22.
2. Gelvin, J.L.; Gelvin, P.H.J.L. (2005). The Israel-Palestine Conflict: One Hundred Years of War. Cambridge University Press. p. 92-93. ISBN 978-0-521-85289-0. Retrieved 2021-11-22.
3. ^ Parmenter, B.M.K. (2010). Giving Voice to Stones: Place and Identity in Palestinian Literature. University of Texas Press. p. 21. ISBN 978-0-292-78795-7. Retrieved 2021-11-22.
4. The mixed legacy of Golda Meir, Israel’s first female PM
5. Said, Fifty Years of Dispossession
6. Frank Giles (June 15, 1969). "Golda Meir: 'Who can blame Israel'". Sunday Times. p. 12.
7. New York Times, A talk with Golda Meir Aug. 27, 1972

References

• 1969 in international relations
• Political quotes