Daniel Pipes, an historian and expert on Islam and the Middle East, writes:
The former speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives and current Republican presidential candidate said yesterday that “there was no Palestine as a state. It was part of the Ottoman Empire. We have invented the Palestinian people, who are in fact Arabs and are historically part of the Arab people, and they had the chance to go many places.”
Everyone from the PLO to a Mitt Romney spokesman jumped on Gingrich for this assertion, but he happens to be absolutely correct: No Arabic-speaking Muslims identified themselves as “Palestinian” until 1920, when, in rapid order this appellation and identity was adopted by the Muslim Arabs living in the British mandate of Palestine.
For details, see a long article of mine from 1989 on the topic or a short one from 2000.
Gingrich made the same assertion in the debate last night, as Marc Thiessen reports:
Romney tried to go after him by saying it was irresponsible and that Romney would be more cautious, declaring “I’m not a bomb thrower.” Newt deftly replied: “I’m a Reaganite,” citing Reagan’s declaration that the Soviet Union was an “evil empire.” The message GOP voters took away was: Newt is a bold conservative like Reagan, Romney is a cautious moderate. That’s a win for Newt.