Ramallah: An Israeli lawmaker triggered controversy and laughter on Wednesday as she questioned the legitimacy of Palestinian statehood, citing the absence of the ‘P’ sound in the Arabic alphabet, putting into question the veracity of the Palestinians’ claim to their ancestral lands.
Likud Knesset member Anat Berko said from the podium during a discussion called by the Israeli opposition parties on the status of the two-state solution that there was no such thing as Palestinian people since Arabic does not have the consonant ‘P’.
“As we’ve noted, the letter ‘P’ doesn’t even exist in Arabic so the borrowed term (Palestine) is worth looking into,” she said.
Palestinian lawmakers left the plenum in protest after Berko’s remarks and the left-wing parliamentarians criticised the remarks.
“Are you an imbecile?” was the way Meretz lawmaker Tamar Zandberg shouted out in response to the remarks. “Yes, Berko. There is indeed no ‘P’ sound in Arabic but there is the ‘F’ sound and the word Palestine in Arabic beings with the consonant ‘F’ and it is the same as in Hebrew and Palestine is pronounced as Falastin,” said Zandberg.
As the absence of the consonant ‘P’ in the Arabic alphabet has been used as a fundamental point of theory by those who oppose Palestinian self-determination, it is general considered a serious political argument in Israel.
This Israeli claim of the lack of a Palestinian nation dates back to June, 1969 when then Israeli premier Golda Meir said “there was no such thing as Palestinians. When was there an independent Palestinian people with a Palestinian state? It was either southern Syria before the First World War, and then it was a Palestine including Jordan. It was not as though there was a Palestinian people in Palestine considering itself as a Palestinian people and we came and threw them out and took their country away from them. They did not exist.”
