I made this post before that is relevant:
You could say that about alot of nations in the MENA.
Lebanese are made-up nation that exists only to destroy Syria.
Kuwaitis are made-up nation that exists only to destroy Iraq.
Everybody in the Middle East is "made-up" 200 years ago the only thing referred to as "Lebanese" was pertaining to the Jabal Libnan.
150 years ago "Syrian" only refered to Levantine Christians. Muslim Arabs never referred to themselves as Syrian until the 1880's. There's a resons why Syrian nationalists like the SSNP reject Arabism, and Lebanese as a independent people but rather embrace Syrian as it's own people
There never was such a thing known as Jordan. The Brits just called it every thing east of the Jordan River in the British Mandate of Palestine as Transjordan (meaning across the Jordan). No one ever used Jordan to refer to a unified nation or region.
Nationalities in the MENA are merely derived from fictional borders. What if the Syrian border was pushed the West 5 mile? Natives in Arsal would not be considering themselves Lebanese but rather Syrian.
Is there any genetic difference between Lebanese and coastal Syrians. They've been a unified people since the end of the Pheonecian city-states, as Aramaeas, Syriacs and finally Arabs.
Eastern Arabia for the past millenium has been "Bahrain". Why is it today only people of a fraction of hisorical Bahrain refer to themselves as Bahraini.
What if the French never gave Hatay to the Turks. Would people in Hatay be calling themselves Turks or Arabs? tHERE'S a reason why Hatay Alawites still consider themselves Syrian as noted by the Syrian Resistance.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Syrian_Resistance
And wtf is a Qatari? Arab nomads that were given oil rich land. There is no Qatari people. The majority of Qataris aren't even Arabs.
And this is when Phallangists come in and claim they are indeed Phoenician. Is a Galeian Palestinian Christian and Coastal Syrian Christian not a Phoenician just because the French cut up arbitrary borders? Was there ever a unified Phoenicia? No. "Lebanon" had been Syria since the time of Jesus. Then the French come a long and decide people on this side are Syrian but people on this side are Palestinian and people on that side are Lebanese. This makes no sense whatsoever. People base there nationhood off what some colonialist power decided.
nationalism in and of itself makes no sense but that's a different story.
Really there are only three people in the ME. Arabs, pre-Islamic populations who rejected Arabization-Assyrians, Copts, Berbers et al. and recent migrants like Circassians.
Is an Assyrian in Syrian and an Assyrian in Iraq any different? Is a Khuzestani Arab and an Iraqi any different? What does a Eastern Syrian bedouin have to do with a Coastal Syrian Maronite? Were they ever a unified people prior to imperialism.
So the moral of the story is why single out Palestinians