Gail Ellis - Quora
Gail Ellis
, lives in Israel
Answered 3 years ago · Author has 458 answers and 1.3M answer views
If you read historical documents talking about Palestine such as old travelogues, the British White Papers, the Peel Report, reports to the UN, contemporary news reports from archives etc., you will generally see references to “Palestinian Jews” and “Palestinian Arabs” or to “Jews” and “Arabs” (for short.) What you will not see is references to “Jews” and “Palestinians” (when the two groups are being discussed together) with the term “Palestinian” referring solely to the Arab residents.
For example, UNGA 181 proposed ‘a Jewish state’ and ‘an Arab state’ not ‘a Jewish state’ and ‘a Palestinian state’.
[1] .
UNSC 242, passed in 1967, refers to “ territories occupied in the recent conflict” by Israel, not to ‘Occupied Palestinian Territories”
[2]
Even the PLO’s original charter refers to “The Palestinian Arab people” - that qualifier being necessary because when the charter was written (in 1964) ‘Palestinian’ was not synonymous with ‘Arab’ (and it renounced any claim to sovereignty over the West Bank and Gaza as well, since those areas were still in Jordanian and Egyptian hands.)
[3]
While it is true, as one of the answers below notes, that both Jews and Arabs could be referred to as Palestinians (because both groups became citizens of Mandate for Palestine after 1920) the word ‘Palestinian’ (when used alone without some other context qualifying it) generally referred to Jews.