There was never a Palestinian people before Israel, and the land was empty.

The claim collapses under the historical record. For centuries, the land between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea was widely known as Palestine, and its inhabitants as Palestinians. Maps, travel accounts, official records, and archival documents from the Roman, Byzantine, Islamic, Ottoman, and British periods all refer to Palestine. Ironically, the British governed the "Mandate for Palestine," while Zionist institutions proudly bore names such as the Palestine Jewish Colonization Association, the Anglo-Palestine Bank, the Palestine Post, and the Palestine Symphony Orchestra. Early Zionist leaders' diaries, correspondence, and planning documents repeatedly acknowledged that Palestine was inhabited, while planning for their displacement. Many Zionists themselves carried Palestinian passports. The myth of "a land without a people" is a classic settler-colonial narrative designed to justify the displacement and replacement of an Indigenous people.

Palestinians did not merely exist before Israel. They thrived. By the late Ottoman colonial period, Palestine was one of the most heavily populated and economically vibrant regions of the empire. Cities such as Jerusalem, Jaffa, Nablus, Gaza, Hebron, and Acre flourished as centers of commerce, learning, and culture. Palestinians exported world-renowned Jaffa oranges to international markets, operated major ports in Jaffa and Haifa, published newspapers such as Filastin, sustained a vibrant literary and cultural life, and established labor unions and representative political organizations dedicated to Palestinian self-determination. The emergence of the Zionist settler-colonial movement in the late nineteenth century marked the beginning of a systematic effort to erase them. Yet despite decades of ethnic cleansing, occupation, apartheid, and now genocide, Palestinians remain steadfast on their land and continue resisting colonization.

Palestinian self-determination and independence were recognized long before the establishment of Israel. During British colonial rule, the League of Nations recognized the Palestinian people's right to self-determination alongside that of neighboring Arab territories. Yet Palestine alone was denied that right in order to facilitate the Zionist settler-colonial project. As the UN later acknowledged, Palestinian self-determination "was not applied to Palestine, obviously because of the intention to make possible the creation of the Jewish National Home there," and the Mandate system itself "ran counter to that principle." More than a century later, UN resolutions, international court rulings, and human rights organizations continue to affirm Israel's violation of the Palestinian people's right to self-determination.

The myth of "a land without a people" is a classic settler-colonial narrative. From North America and Australia to Algeria, colonial powers routinely portrayed Indigenous lands as empty through doctrines such as terra nullius ("nobody's land"), while dehumanizing Indigenous peoples as uncivilized, backward, or merely fragmented communities without a political identity. The Zionist project was no different. From the myth of "a land without a people," to claims of "making the desert bloom," to more recent genocidal rhetoric describing Palestinians as "human animals," the colonial logic has remained the same: erase Indigenous peoples' presence or deny their humanity in order to legitimize colonization.

This myth attempts to dissolve Palestinians into a broader Arab identity. While Palestinians are part of the wider Arab world, they have their own homeland, identity, and national movement. During British colonial rule, Palestinians established representative political bodies, including the Palestine Arab Congress and the Arab Higher Committee, whose explicit purpose was advancing Palestinian self-determination and independence.