WINNIPEG, Canada | A question at the heart of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is almost never asked.
If an independent Palestinian state in Judea and Samaria and Gaza was always the great historical objective, why wasn’t one created when Israel did not control either territory?
From 1948 until 1967, Israel did not govern Judea and Samaria, commonly referred to internationally as the West Bank. Jordan did.
Israel did not govern Gaza. Egypt did.
For nearly two decades, the territories now routinely presented as the indispensable foundation of a Palestinian state were entirely outside Israeli control.
And there was no Palestinian state.
That is not Israeli propaganda. It is history.
Nineteen Years That Cannot Be Erased
After the 1948 Arab-Israeli war, Jordan controlled Judea and Samaria and eastern Jerusalem. Egypt controlled Gaza.
Jordan went far beyond administering the territory. In 1950, it formally united the East and West Banks, an annexation that received little international recognition.
Jordan’s 1954 Nationality Law defined as Jordanian nationals non-Jewish holders of Palestinian nationality who had been ordinarily resident in the kingdom during the prescribed period. Palestinians in Judea and Samaria consequently held Jordanian citizenship and participated in Jordanian political institutions.
Egypt took a different approach.
It administered Gaza but did not annex it or grant its residents Egyptian citizenship. Egypt instead maintained the Strip as a separate territory under Egyptian administration. Its 1955 Basic Law and 1962 Constitutional Order preserved the territory’s specifically Palestinian character.
The distinction matters.
Jordan incorporated Judea and Samaria. Egypt administered Gaza separately. But neither Arab government established an independent Palestinian state.
Consider what else was absent during those 19 years.
There were no Israeli settlements in Judea and Samaria preventing Palestinian independence.
There was no Israeli military government in Gaza.
There were no Israeli checkpoints between Palestinian cities in Judea and Samaria.
There was no Israeli control over either territory to blame for the absence of Palestinian sovereignty.
If establishing a Palestinian state in Judea and Samaria and Gaza was the overriding objective, the opportunity existed.
It was not taken.
The 1964 Charter Raises An Even Harder Question
The most revealing evidence may come from the Palestinians’ own national movement.
The Palestine Liberation Organization was established in 1964, three years before Israel took control of Judea and Samaria and Gaza during the Six-Day War.
Article 24 of the original Palestinian National Charter stated:
“This Organization does not exercise any regional sovereignty over the West Bank in the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan, on the Gaza Strip or the Himmah Area.”
That wording appears in the 1964 charter published by the Yasser Arafat Foundation itself.
Its significance is difficult to ignore.
The organization established to advance the Palestinian national cause expressly disclaimed territorial sovereignty over Judea and Samaria and Gaza while those areas remained under Jordanian and Egyptian control.
That provision disappeared after 1967.
This does not mean Palestinian Arabs did not exist before 1967. They did.
Nor does it establish that Palestinian national identity suddenly appeared after the Six-Day War. Palestinian identity and Palestinian nationalism had developed before then, particularly during the British Mandate and alongside broader currents of Arab nationalism.
But it demonstrates something more precise.
The modern territorial formula defining Palestinian statehood around Judea and Samaria, eastern Jerusalem, and Gaza cannot simply be projected backward as though it had always been the uncontested focus of the Palestinian national movement.
The historical record says otherwise.
Palestinian Nationalism Was Also Part Of A Broader Arab Identity
Another part of that history is frequently flattened in today’s political debate.
Palestinian nationalism developed alongside a much broader Arab nationalism.
The 1968 Palestinian National Charter declared that the Palestinian people were “an integral part of the Arab nation” and described Palestine as “an indivisible part of the Arab homeland.”
That language matters.
National identities evolve. They become stronger, more politically distinct, and more institutionalized over time. There is nothing unusual about that.
Acknowledging this evolution is not the same as denying the existence of Palestinian Arabs.
The Palestinian Arabs living in Judea and Samaria under Jordanian rule were not citizens of an independent Palestinian state. Jordan incorporated them and generally granted them Jordanian citizenship.
The Arabs of Gaza lived under Egyptian administration but were not granted Egyptian citizenship.
Yet throughout this period the Arab-Israeli conflict continued.
That historical reality raises an unavoidable question.
If the conflict was fundamentally about creating a Palestinian state in Judea and Samaria and Gaza, why was such a state not established while both territories were already in Arab hands?
What Was Supposed To Be “Liberated” In 1964?
The year the PLO was founded makes the question even more significant.
In 1964, Jordan controlled Judea and Samaria. Gaza was controlled by Egypt. Israel governed neither.
So what territory remained to be “liberated”?
Israel.
That is the uncomfortable historical reality.
The Palestinian national movement that emerged institutionally through the PLO could not originally have been organized around ending Israeli control of Judea and Samaria and Gaza because no such Israeli control existed.
Its struggle was directed against Israel itself.
That matters because the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is now frequently narrated as though it began with the Israeli “occupation” in 1967.
It did not.
Israel was attacked in 1948.
Palestinian refugees existed before 1967.
The PLO existed before 1967.
Palestinian armed organizations existed before 1967.
The wider Arab-Israeli conflict existed before 1967.
Calls for Israel’s destruction existed before 1967.
What did not exist before 1967 was Israeli control over Judea and Samaria and Gaza.
That distinction is fundamental.
1967 Changed The Territorial Argument, Not The Existence Of The Conflict
None of this means Palestinians today do not possess a national identity.
They clearly do.
Nor does it mean Palestinian national aspirations should simply be dismissed because identities develop over time. National movements throughout history have evolved according to political circumstances, wars, borders, and changing collective identities.
The point is that today’s political narrative cannot be projected backward and presented as timeless.
The Palestinian question before 1967 was not simply today’s two-state dispute waiting for Israel to withdraw from Judea and Samaria and Gaza.
Israel was already absent from those territories.
Yet there was still war.
There was still rejection.
A Palestinian liberation movement still existed.
And its founding charter did not claim sovereignty over the very territories now presented as the historic heart of the Palestinian statehood project.
Only after the Six-Day War placed those areas under Israeli control did their centrality to Palestinian territorial nationalism fundamentally change.
That chronology deserves far more attention than it receives.
Truth Matters
The strongest historical argument is not that Palestinian identity is fictional. That claim is unnecessary and too easily challenged by the historical record.
The stronger argument is what actually happened.
A Palestinian Arab population existed before 1967.
A developing Palestinian national consciousness existed.
Powerful pan-Arab identification also existed, as did Jordanian incorporation of Judea and Samaria, Egyptian administration of Gaza, and a PLO whose founding charter expressly disclaimed sovereignty over both territories.
All of those facts can be true simultaneously.
Together, they raise questions that should be asked without apology.
If Palestinian sovereignty in Judea and Samaria and Gaza was always the fundamental issue, why did Jordan not create Palestine there?
Why did Egypt not create Palestine in Gaza?
Why did the PLO expressly disclaim sovereignty over those territories in 1964?
And if Israeli control of those territories is supposedly the root cause of the conflict, why was Israel already the target before it controlled a single inch of either one?
Those questions are not attempts to erase Palestinians.
They are attempts to restore history to a debate increasingly dominated by slogans.
A serious discussion about Israel, Palestinian nationalism and peace must begin with the chronology as it actually happened, not with a modern political narrative projected backward onto the past.
The years from 1948 to 1967 cannot simply disappear because they complicate today’s preferred explanation of the conflict.
History matters.
Chronology matters.
Truth matters.
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