(Since ancient times this region of the middle east has usually been viewed as Greater Syria; thus when the Romans ruled over Judea, the name they gave the province was not Judea but Syria Philistinia, or Palestinian Syria. Even at the beginning of the 20th Century the people whom we know today as Palestinians more or less expected to end up living in a southern province of Syria. All the hub-bub about an independent Palestinian state came about for the first time in the 20th Century; before that time the Palestinians had no aspirations to found an independent state; they thought they were Syrians. The Jews, on the other hand, have always claimed the right to an independent Jewish state located right there where it is today.)

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