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As early as October 1919, Musa Kazim Husseini, a former Ottoman official, elected Jerusalem mayor under the British, told a Zionist acquaintance that “we demand no separation from Syria.”5 Six months later, in April 1920, his peers instigated the first anti-Jewish pogrom in Jerusalem. This was not in the name of Palestine’s independence, but under the demand for its incorporation into the (short-lived) Syrian kingdom, headed by Faisal ibn Hussein of Mecca, the celebrated hero of the “Great Arab Revolt” against the Ottoman Empire and the effective leader of the nascent pan-Arab movement. Four years later, in a special report to the League of Nations, the Arab Executive Committee (AEC), the umbrella organization of the Palestinian Arabs, still referred to Palestine as the unlawfully severed southern part of “the one country of Syria, with its one population of the same language, origin, customs, and religious beliefs, and its natural boundaries.”
And in June 1926, the league’s permanent mandates commission was informed of an Arab complaint that “it was not in conformity with Article 22 of the Mandate to print the initials and even the words ‘Eretz Israel’ after the name ‘Palestine’, while refusing the
Arabs the title ‘Suria al-Janubiyya’ (’Southern Syria’).”

In July 1937, the Arab Higher Committee (AHC), the AEC’s successor, justified its rejection of the Peel Commission’s recommendation for the partition of Palestine on the grounds that “this country does not belong only to [the] Palestine Arabs but to the whole Arab and Muslim Worlds.”

As late as August 1947, three months before the passing of the U.N. resolution partitioning Mandate Palestine into Arab and Jewish states, the AHC’s mouthpiece, al-Wahda, advocated the incorporation of Palestine (and Transjordan) into “Greater Syria.”

Jerusalem Mufti, Hajj Amin Husseini, leader of the Palestinian Arabs during this period, never acted as a local patriot seeking national selfdetermination, but rather as an aspiring pan-Arab regional advocate. An early admirer of the “Greater Syrian” ideal, he co-edited the Jerusalembased paper Suria al-Janubiyya (Southern Syria), as Palestine was named by pan-Arabists, and presided over the city’s Arab Club, which advocated Palestine’s annexation to Syria. He cast his sights much higher after fleeing the country in 1937 to avoid arrest for the instigation of nationwide violence. Presenting himself to Hitler and Mussolini as a spokesman of the entire “Arab Nation,” Husseini argued that the “Palestine problem” necessitated an immediate solution not because of the national aspirations of the Palestinian Arabs, but because it constituted “an obstacle to the unity and independence of the Arab countries by pitting them directly against the Jews of the entire world, dangerous enemies, whose secret arms are money, corruption, and intrigue.” His proposed solution, therefore, was not Palestinian statehood but “the independence of [unified] Palestine, Syria and Iraq” under his leadership. As he put it in one of his letters to Hitler, “[T]he Arab people, slandered, maltreated, and deceived by our common enemies, confidently expects that the result of your final victory will be their independence and complete liberation, as well as the creation of their unity, when they will be linked to your country by a treaty of friendship and cooperation.”

While the young generation of diaspora Palestinian activists in the 1950s who sought to avenge the 1948 “catastrophe” of the creation of Israel did not share the Mufti’s grandiose ambitions, they were no less committed to the pan-Arab ideal. This was evidenced inter alia by the name of the first “resistance” group - the Arab Nationalist Movement (ANM). The panArab ideal was also evident in the diverse composition of the movement comprising Palestinian (e.g., George Habash, Wadi Haddad) and Arab activists (notably Hani Hindi, scion of a respected Damascene family).

Another prominent adherent to the pan-Arab ideal was Ahmad Shuqeiri, a Lebanon-born politician of mixed Egyptian, Hijazi, and Turkish descent who served as the Arab League’s deputy secretary-general, as well as Syrian and Saudi delegate to the UN. On May 28, 1964 he became the founding chairman of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), established that day by the Arab states at the initiative of Egyptian President, Gamal Abdel Nasser.
“Palestine is part and parcel in the Arab homeland,” Shuqeiri told the Security Council on May 31, 1956”; The Arab world is not prepared to surrender one single atom of their right to this sacred territory.” Clarifying to which part of the “Arab homeland” this specific territory belonged, he added that Palestine “is nothing but southern Syria.” In his account, “the Palestine area was linked to Syria from time immemorial” and “there was no question of separation” until the great powers brought this about by creating mandates under the League of Nations, with Britain controlling Palestine and France administering Syria...

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The Myth of Palestinian Centrality

E. Karsh, Besa, July 2014.
https://besacenter.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/08/Booklet-108-copy-on-4.8.2014.pdf