Palestinians are enraged because an American politician recently pointed out that "Palestine" does not exist, never existed and was invented during the Cold War by the Soviet KGB as yet another ploy to expand Russian influence in the Middle East. The 1964 charter founding the Palestine Liberation Organization was created by the KGB and "approved" by 400 pro-communist Palestinians. This charter explicitly denied any Palestinian claims on the West Bank (then part of Jordan) and Gaza (then part of Egypt). After Israel conquered these two areas in the 1967 war, the PLO dropped that clause. But there was no real effort to push the concept of "Palestine" until the 1970s. The Arab world, humiliated from losing five wars with Israel, and seeing Israel outstrip its Arab neighbors in so many ways (economically, educationally, politically and so on), got behind the idea that the Jews and Israel were oppressing the newly invented "Palestinian people" and must be destroyed.
So yeah, they are invented. But we are a nation of self-made individuals, so we should hardly be the ones to deny the reality that right now the Palestinians think of themselves as a people and have to be dealt with on that basis.
Still, it is interesting to note the KGB origins. I didn't realize that angle. But it is not terribly relevant any more.
We're still dealing with the damage that the Soviet Union inflicted on the world.
