The Arabs used to chant that Palestine did not exist

[Igel]

3. If you look at old maps, you'll

see the NW Territory. But it was never a country.

Palestine was a geographic area, like "Western Europe". It wasn't as well defined as Basque Country or Occitania is now. It was a province back in Roman times and a province often since then, but without quite the same borders. While these things change, it also lacked any sort of ethnic or linguistic differentiation or sense of beingness since long before the Arabization of the territory. You really have to go back to 70 AD and before.

Palestinians exist as an ethnicity now, but we've basically seen ethnogenesis born of nationalism rooted in a desire to be apart.