D_Gunther Snotpole
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Yes, they were definitely ethnically distinct, just like the Hebrews were distinct from the Egyptians were distinct from the Syrians were distinct from Arabians and so on. They all had different traditions, religions, languages, etcetera.
In the Roman Era there were barely any Arabs in Palestine, but there were lots of Palestinians. I don't really want to hijack the thread, but what people now refer to as Arab is mainly defined by language, not ethnicity. The language was spread as Islam became the predominate religion of the region, but most of the people have no Arab blood at all. To make it as concise as possible: the people from the Arabian Peninsula are ethnic Arabs, everyone else just speaks Arabic.
After centuries ... millennia, really ... of movement of peoples in and out of the Holy Land, do you really think that what we now call 'Palestinians' are different in blood from their Jordanian or Syrian or Saudi Arabian brothers?
And, putting language aside for the moment, are they greatly difference in terms of what we broadly call 'cultural factors'?
Perhaps you do and perhaps you can make a case.
I don't claim to know.
(I do, however, admit some doubt. My understanding is that a large proportion of them arrived in what is now Israel only in the last 150 years or so.)
But I'd love to have you elaborate further on this topic, Maia.