Is there a country called Palestine?

It seems that as of late the Denver Post food section has developed a penchant for the term Palestine. First, it was an essay about the ubiquitous salad found across the Middle East of diced cucumbers and tomatoes. Israeli salad, many IJN readers will know it as. The Denver Post not only failed to mention its popularity in Israel, but chose only to cite Palestine as one of the countries where this salad is eaten daily (See IJN editorial, “Culturally tasteless recipe for Middle Eastern salad”.) No doubt, the salad is popular among Palestinians. But where is the country Palestine? As an independent nation-state, it doesn’t (yet) exist. The Denver Post could have used West Bank, Palestinian Territories or, if wanted to take a political stance, Occupied Palestinian Territories.

Now, it is true that the UN, along with other international bodies, has accepted as a member the State of Palestine. But it does not reflect the reality that there is no independent nation-state of Palestine and the Palestinian territories remain occupied. Until there is a final negotiation between Israel and the PLO, there is no State of Palestine, though there are large areas in the West Bank that are run by the Palestinian Authority and the entire Gaza Strip is run by Hamas.

A couple of weeks after that first article came another from long-time food writer Bill St. John. In praise of preserved lemon, he wrote: “In 1987, on a visit to what I call the Holy Land, I ate the best salad of my life. It was at a small outdoor restaurant in Bethlehem, Palestine, on the West Bank.”

A strangely constructed geographical-national description if there ever was one. At minimum, the preposition “on” before West Bank is incorrect unless followed by the words “Jordan River.” This slight gaffe reveals a lack of knowledge of the complexities of the area. Whereas the West Bank once was, post-WW I, an tied to the larger Hashemite kingdom of Jordan, today it is its own entity, run largely by the PA. The correct preposition, therefore, would be “in” the West Bank. Pedantic perhaps. But seeing how willy-nilly the term Palestine is being used, detail is important. Words matter, as they say.

Are these innocent blunders? Or is the Denver Post trying to normalize the concept of a nation-state called Palestine — even though no such nation-state currently exists?

The sad thing is that these semantic battles don’t mean anything for the average Palestinian living in the West Bank. Many — especially the hundreds of thousands who work in Israel — do interact daily with Israeli forces, and surely do feel the reality of not living a normal nation-state. But a primary reason holding Palestinians back from inhabiting a normal reality is that its leadership is overly focused on semantic or symbolic victories — for example, recognition at the International Criminal Court and attempting to bring court cases against Israel — and far less focused on improving the daily lives of its constituents. If Palestinian took a step away from loathing Israel and instead put Palestinians front and center, the situation — on the ground, not on letterhead — would improve. Sadly Palestinian leadership has and continues to prioritize its grievances rather than its people.

The situation among currently or forming warring states is certainly different to that of the Gulf states, who historically never had beef with Israel. Nevertheless, Palestinians would do well to take a leaf out of the United Arab Emirates’ and Bahrain’s book. There is so much more to gain from working together than remaining in perpetual opposition. As no less a source than the Torah says: “Behold how good and how pleasing for brothers to sit together in unity.”