“Palestine and the Palestinians” is a historical paper written by Dr. Johnny Mansour for Mayroun: The Palestinian Narrative Program, an initiative of RO’A Center for Political and Strategic Studies. Beginning with the transformations that shaped Palestine at the end of the nineteenth century and during the late Ottoman period, the paper traces the history of the Palestinian people through the British Mandate, the Zionist settler-colonial project, the Nakba, displacement, occupation, and the political developments that followed, extending into the contemporary period.
The paper examines the formation and continuity of Palestinian collective identity and the enduring relationship between Palestinians and their land. It emphasizes that Palestinian history does not begin with the Nakba of 1948, but that the Nakba constitutes a major rupture within a much longer historical trajectory marked by imperial intervention, settler colonialism, fragmentation, and repeated attempts at erasure.
Written specifically for Mayroun, the paper provides the historical foundation for the program’s broader exploration of Palestinian identity, memory, culture, and belonging. It situates contemporary Palestinian experiences within this longer history and affirms that Palestinians, despite their geographic and political fragmentation, remain one people connected by a shared history, homeland, and collective narrative.
