Arabs understood the Palestine conflict as territorial, not ideological

Evidence

For the Arabs, the conflict over the Palestine question long antedates any interest on their part in Zionism. Indeed, the quite extensive literature produced in Arabic from the late nineteenth century until the period following the Second World War shows a remarkable lack of concern with Zionist theory and doctrine. On the whole, the Arabs saw the conflict—rightly one may say—as one between two groups of people both desiring the same territory. Such abstract questions as the varying nationalist theories of the one side or the other were of limited interest, and the Arabic literature on Zionism until after the Second World War is meager and very largely derivative. — Bernard Lewis, From Babel to Dragomans, 1356

Categorization

• XREF: Complicates Said-adjacent claims about Orientalist framing by noting Arabs’ own non-ideological reading of the conflict.