I'll take your word on the DNA stuff. Personally I have absolutely no interest in it and view it as entirely irrelevant in this discussion.
owlo said:
My central claim is that: 'Palestinian Christian' is an entirely modern (c19/c20) construct distinct from ancient development, because there is really nothing to define what a 'Palestinian Christian' might be. Those [Christians] in c7/c8 did not significantly shape Palestinian nationalism as a group, nor could have done given the diversity of the groups thinking and size of the group. If a small proportion of the descendents of an ancient group identify as 'Christian Palestinian' that is their choice, but it's irrelevant insofar as anything is concerned. I don't see linkage/causation between the ancient Christian peoples and the modern movement. You mentioned Maronites for example as active in history, but there's been no historical Palestinian Christian movement. To me the whole argument is something akin to "I have Viking ancestry, therefore I'm a British Nationalist" - It simply doesn't compute.
I agree that "Palestinian" identity is a modern construct, just as all national identities are. I disagree that it represents an absolutely novel, clean break with the past, which is what you seem to be suggesting here (correct me if I'm wrong). Nationalism in all forms draws on myths and invented traditions, and in some cases (though not in the Palestinian case for the most part) ideals of racial purity, but it also draws on a real, genuine shared sense of collective belonging, based on history, language, etc. At the time when nationalism developed among the Arabic-speakers of Palestine, the Christian element of that society shared in that collective sense of belonging, which itself drew on a history and cultural consciousness largely shaped by the consequences of the Islamic conquest. But of course it is true that there were alternative, sometimes over-lapping, sometimes competing sources of identity with the potential to shape alternative identities and perhaps separate destinies for the Arabs of Palestine. That they didn't is down to historical contingency.
The Maronite case is illustrative. They developed a distinct form of nationalism due to their particular circumstances - they were concentrated largely in a small, definable geographic region, and had long established ties with Western Europe due to their links with Rome, and in the 19th century with France. Whereas the Arab Christians of Palestine and the rest of Syria, who were for the most part Greek Orthodox, were geographically dispersed, often in conflict with their church authorities, and had much less firmly established ties with a foreign power (it was traditionally Russia but Russian support tended to go to the Greek hierarchy rather than the laity). In those particular circumstances, the Arab Christians of Syria and Palestine developed nationalism along lines that linked them with rather than separated them from their Muslim neighbors.
owlo said:
If the nature of ancient society had shaped these people in some way towards Palestinian Nationalism, why are there so many differing and competing points of view with regards to it there?
Because the development of nationalism is contingent on a multiplicity of factors, not pre-determined in any way, and because nationalist identity rarely neatly corresponds with defined categories of identity. There is always overlap with alternative, competing sources of identity. None of them in themselves have a determining factor on the outcome. I am not arguing that the nature of the society that developed in Palestine after the Arab-Islamic conquest
inevitably produced the Palestinian nationalism we are familiar with today. I am arguing that the Palestinian nationalism that was ultimately produced by the specific circumstances of the late 19th/early 20th centuries derived its primary characteristics from the nature of that society, which happened to include an important Christian element.
As for the differing and competing points of view, again it boils down to historical contingency. The Arabs of Palestine began to develop a shared sense of national consciousness in the context of the late Ottoman Empire era of reform, Hamidian dictatorship, and CUP liberalism, but it didn't express itself politically, i.e. in the demand for a distinct Palestinian state until much later. This is because they also harbored an Ottoman identity, the product of centuries of Ottoman rule and the prestige associated with it, and of the 19th century idea of 'Ottomanism', and so remained loyal to the continuance of the Ottoman Empire while it existed. They also had a shared sense of identity with their neighbors in Syria, across the Jordan, and in Lebanon. Following the First World War, the idea that Palestine constituted a region within a greater Syria developed, as the establishment of the Hashimite Kingdom of Syria (1918-1920) fueled hopes that the destiny of the Arabs of Palestine was one they shared with their Arab neighbors. In these circumstances a Greater Syrian nationalism was born. The French brought an end to that kingdom in 1920, and the establishment of the mandate for Palestine, a product of British imperial interests which explicitly emphasized the project of facilitating the development of a national home for the Jews there, brought into sharp relief that reality that their destiny would be shaped by these new circumstances. With the failure of the Palestinian Arab effort to thwart the establishment of Israel in 1948, pan-Arab nationalism came to appeal to Palestinian Arabs as a potential means by which to reverse their defeat, but was itself almost entirely discredit by defeat in 1967, after which the specifically Islamic component of Palestinian Arab identity really came to the fore.
