How Did Golda Meir Define the ‘Palestinians’?

Written four decades ago – two years after the 1973 Yom Kippur War – the late Prime Minister Golda Meir said, “There is no Palestinian people. There are Palestinian refugees.”

Republished this week by David Bedein of the Jerusalem-based Israel Resource News Agency.

To be misquoted is an occupational hazard of political leadership; for this reason I should like to clarify my position in regard to the Palestinian issue. I have been charged with being rigidly insensitive to the question of the Palestinian Arabs. In evidence of this I am supposed to have said, “There are no Palestinians.” My actual words were: “There is no Palestinian people. There are Palestinian refugees.” The distinction is not semantic. My statement was based on a lifetime of debates with Arab nationalists who vehemently excluded a separatist Palestinian Arab nationalism from their formulations.

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