To have a land occupied you would have had to have lost sovereignty at one point. I must ask, was there ever in all of history a nation by the name of Palestine? If not, then how is it occupied?

Contrary to what we are told, you basically have two groups of immigrants, the Jews and the Arabs whom are presenting themselves as Palestinians. The Palestinians like to say this is their ancestral home land, but if it is, then how can one explain a total lack of any historical documentation to support this claim? If you go back prior to 1900, there is not one historical writing that speaks of them, does not matter if you are looking in Islamic, Ottoman or Western Sources.

But there is more, why don’t we back up a little, and I will explain all this. One of the greatest problems you have is the lack of census, this came due to the Ottomans until the 1800’s had a fatwa against taking a census so none exist from their records prior to this time, the ones you see today are backward projections, taking the word of the Arabs that they were there for thousands of years, but were they? There is a little known census that was taken in the area by the same people that took census across Europe in the 1500’s to the 1700’s, this was by the Jesuits, they had with permission and oversight by the Ottoman authorities conducted a census in 1697, what they came up with is most enlightening in regards to the claims that are made, what is more interesting is never once did the Ottoman authorities dispute this census, you can still find it today, there are still publications of it. Here is the census:

"Palaestina ex monumentis veteribus illustrata" - a detailed geographical survey of Palestine in 1696 written in Latin by Adriaan Reland published by Willem Broedelet, Utrecht, in 1714.
 Residents of the REGION mainly concentrated in cities: Jerusalem, Acre, Safed, Jaffa, Tiberius and Gaza.
 In most cities, the majority of residents are Christians, Jews and others, very few Muslims who generally are Bedouin, who came to serve as Seasonal workers in agriculture or building.
 Nablus: 120 Muslims, 70 Samaritans
 Nazareth: 700 people - all Christians
 Umm al-Fahm: 50 people-10 families, ALL Christian
 Gaza: 550 people- 300 Jews,250 Christian(Jews engaged in agriculture Christians deal with the trading and transporting the products)
 Tiberius: 300 residents, all Jews.
 Safed: about 200 inhabitants, all Jews
 Jerusalem: 5000 people, most of them (3,500) Jews, the rest- Christian (1000), Muslim (500)
 Note* (no Muslims in Gaza)!

 Now one may ask, if there is any truth to this, suggest you look at the documented eye witness accounts of the day, they back up what is shown in the census:

"There is not a solitary village throughout its whole extent (valley of Jezreel, Galilea); not for thirty miles in either direction... One may ride ten miles hereabouts and not see ten human beings. For the sort of solitude to make one dreary, come to Galilee... Nazareth is forlorn... Jericho lies a moldering ruin... Bethlehem and Bethany, in their poverty and humiliation... untenanted by any living creature.
 - Mark Twain, "The Innocents Abroad", 1867 –

"There are many proofs, such as ancient ruins, broken aqueducts, and remains of old roads, which show that it has not always been so desolate as it seems now. In the portion of the plain between Mount Carmel and Jaffa one sees but rarely a village or other sights of human life. There some rude mills here which are turned by the stream. A ride of half an hour more brought us to the ruins ..."
 - B. W. Johnson, in "Young Folks in Bible Lands": Chapter IV, 1892 -

 "The land in Palestine is lacking in people to till its fertile soil".
 - British archaeologist Thomas Shaw, mid-1700s -

So what we see is a land with little or no population, so where did the Arab population come? How about we let the British tell us who in the early 1900’s had a royal naval commission investigate this:

"The area was under populated and remained economically stagnant until the arrival of the first Zionist pioneers in the 1880's, who came to rebuild the Jewish land. The country had remained "The Holy Land" in the religious and historic consciousness of mankind, which associated it with the Bible and the history of the Jewish people. Jewish development of the country also attracted large numbers of other immigrants - both Jewish and Arab.
 - The report of the British Royal Commission, 1913 –

 People who claim the Arabs were in the land first fail to acknowledge the facts, the Arab migration to the land during the 1920's and 1930's has been well documented. In fact, the British Hope-Simpson Commission addressed this issue in its recommendation of 1930.
 The British governor of the Sinai (1922-1936) reported in the Palestine Royal Commission Report that illegal immigration to Palestine was not only occurring from Sinai, but also from Transjordan and Syria.
 In 1939, British PM, Winston Churchill, stated " the Arabs have crowded into the country and multiplied till their population has increased more than even all world Jewry could lift up the Jewish population."
 In 1934, the Governor of the Syrian district of Hauran admitted that within just a few months, more than 30,000 Arabs left Hauran for Palestine.
 The 1844 Ottoman Census shows a Jewish majority living in Jerusalem, Hebron, S'fat, and Gaza City. To claim that the Jews were not there prior to Israel's establishment is simply false.


As I said, both were migrants, the Jews came due to persecution, the Arabs due to economic reasons, both wanted to lay claim to the land, the Jews had a claim on historical right, the Arabs had to have a claim, thus started the narrative of the Palestinians.