There was no such thing as Palestinians…. It was not as though there was a Palestinian people… and we came and threw them out and took their country away from them. They did not exist.

Golda Meir, Israel’s prime minister (1969–1974), made this remark in the early 1970s amid intense international debate over the Arab–Israeli conflict and the status of Palestinian national identity. Coming after the 1967 Six-Day War and during a period of heightened Palestinian political mobilization (including the growing prominence of the PLO), Meir’s statement reflects a common position among some Israeli leaders of her generation: that the conflict was primarily between Israel and surrounding Arab states rather than between Israel and a distinct Palestinian people. The comment has since been frequently cited as emblematic of Israeli denial of Palestinian nationhood and as a flashpoint in discussions of historical narratives and legitimacy.

The quote asserts that a coherent “Palestinian people” did not exist as a national collective prior to Zionist immigration and the creation of Israel, implying that claims of dispossession are anachronistic or politically constructed. Rhetorically, it reframes the conflict from one of colonization or expulsion to one of competing regional claims, thereby seeking to undercut Palestinian arguments for self-determination and return. Critics read it as erasure: denying the lived continuity of Arabic-speaking communities in Palestine and dismissing the emergence of Palestinian nationalism as illegitimate. Historically, the statement highlights how national identities can be contested—formed over time yet also rooted in place—and how political leaders deploy such arguments to justify state narratives.