Did Palestine ever exist in the past as an Arab country?

Answer 1

Palestine sits in the confusing ambiguous space between being a country and being a non-country. It has partial provisional sovereignty and incomplete recognition. Read more below.

This is a difficult question to properly answer. There was never a historic country of Palestine, and prior to the creation of the British Mandate of Palestine in 1922 (with the current known borders), the southwestern Levant was politically arranged quite differently. Prior to 1988, there was international consensus in most major organizations (such as the United Nations, European Union, NATO, etc.) that Palestine was not a country since Israel was the only legitimate post-Palestinian State and that the Gaza Strip and West Bank were territories that should be devolved to Egypt and Jordan respectively. The only organizations that dissented from this view were the Arab League and the Organization of Islamic Conference, which have a vested interest in not recognizing Israel.

In 1988, Yasser Arafat declared the Palestinian State in exile. In 1993, the Oslo Accords secured international recognition (including Israel) of the Palestinian Authority as a political entity in charge of securing a future for the Palestinian people. There was a partial devolution of territory and security to several Palestinian areas. In 2005, the withdrawal of Israeli settlements and soldiers from Gaza resulted in the first fully independent Palestinian State in the Gaza Strip. However, Hamas led an insurrection leading to their illegitimate takeover of the Gaza Strip. The Palestinian Authority still rules a number of bantustans in the West Bank and exercises limited sovereignty over even those regions. Recently, Palestine gained recognition in the United Nations and had its Declaration of Independence vindicated by the International Court of Justice.

Answer 2

The idea of "countries" existing at all is a very new notion, first of all. (read Benedict Anderson's "Imagined Communities" about this) Most countries have not existed for more than 200 years, and in many circumstances a lot less. The concept of belonging to a "nation" even is very, very new. Israel did not exist as a country either, by the way. Jews have lived there for a long time as well, but never as a "country" until recently. Borders, countries and identities the way we think of them now have not existed very long.

However, "Palestine" and "Palestinians" did exist as a region for bureaucratic purposes (for taxing, defending, etc) under various power structures (like the Abbassids, Ottomans, Fatimids, etc), and the ethnicity definitely exists and has its roots in the Levant.