>they
What they?
Look at these quotes i dug out there:
A huge part of the issue is that they are plain Arabs but a lot of people for various reasons are either willingly pretending otherwise for their side's benefit or get fooled into it, which makes a lot of negotiations and dealmaking even more confusing than they need to be.
In European terms they are a lot like a sort of Arab's Transnistria.
The PLO guy says it most clearly:
"The Palestinian people does not exist. The creation of a Palestinian state is only a means for continuing our struggle against the state of Israel for our Arab unity. In reality, today there is no difference between Jordanians, Palestinians, Syrians and Lebanese. Only for political and tactical reasons do we speak today about the existence of a Palestinian people, since Arab national interests demand that we posit the existence of a distinct Palestinian people to oppose Zionism."
Zuheir Mohse, high ranking PLO official, 1977