It's common usage in North African and Middle Eastern / Near-Eastern studies, in English. "Palestine" designates and area larger than either Israel or the Pales

It's common usage in North African and Middle Eastern / Near-Eastern studies, in English. "Palestine" designates and area larger than either Israel or the Palestinian Territories are, individually or combined. Further, by convention, it's essentially timeless—if you write "Palestine" in this sort of context, it'll mean the same thing in 100 years as it does now, provided that convention continues. Meanwhile, the borders and names of modern nation-states change from time to time. I haven't looked into it, but the convention may descend from the German, which language dominates studies of those regions—aside from English and Arabic, now, but for much of the 19th and 20th centuries it eclipsed all other Western languages as the language of Near East studies, generally. (it also comes up more than one might expect in social science concerning South America, in that time period)