Egyptian Émigrés in the Levant of the 19th and 20th Centuries

Is there empirical evidence supporting the surprising Hamas claim that a large part of the Palestinian Arabs are not indigenous to this area but rather immigrated from surrounding countries? On March 23, 2012, the Hamas minister of the interior and of national security, Fathi Hammad, slammed Egypt for not helping to prevent fuel shortages in the Gaza Strip. He then averred that Gaza deserved more brotherly assistance from Egypt, saying that 'half of the Palestinians are Egyptian and the other half are Saudis.'

Was Hammad simply overstating his people's links to a country whose help he sought, or was he reporting something true, if largely unknown, about Palestinian roots?

The answer matters, because the statement marks perhaps the first time a prominent Palestinian leader openly departed from a well-entrenched mythology about the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. According to that familiar picture, the conflict is one of natives against foreigners, indigenous peoples against immigrant-colonists. One side, the Israelis, come from elsewhere, a melting pot of many different origins, none of them local. The other side, in this myth, is entirely local, rooted in Palestine.