For Arabs, the term Palestine was unacceptable.... For Muslims it was alien and irrelevant but not abhorrent in the same way as it was to Jews. The main objection for them was that it seemed to assert a separate entity which politically conscious Arabs in Palestine and elsewhere denied. For them there was no such thing as a country called Palestine. The region which the British called Palestine was merely a separated part of a larger whole. Palestine was not a country and had no frontiers, only administrative boundaries; it was a group of provincial subdivisions, by no means always the same, within a larger entity. For a long time organized and articulate Arab political opinion was virtually unanimous on this point.
At first, the country of which Palestine was a part was felt to be Syria. In Ottoman times, that is, immediately before the coming of the British, Palestine had indeed been a part of a larger Syrian whole from which it was in no way distinguished whether by language, culture, education, administration, political allegiance, or any other significant respect. The dividing line between British-mandated Palestine and French-mandated Syria-Lebanon was an entirely new one and for the people of the area was wholly artificial. It was therefore natural that the nationalist leadership when it first appeared should think in Syrian terms and describe Palestine as southern Syria.
