It depends on what you mean by claimed ... it was certainly claimed by the Ottoman empire. I don't think anybody is saying that the inhabitants should have been forced out! But nobody wanted to live there. It was a depopulated hellhole with no economy. If immigrants had to go anywhere, it was about as empty as you could get. The only reason the Jews moved there was religious. It certainly wasn't because it was a wondrous place that everybody was rushing to get into.
This is not to say that the Palestine is a 'fake country' or 'fake people,' since as Rod1 says all peoples are largely constructs. But it was hardly a wonderful place of peace where all peoples were respected. It had long been destroyed while under Islamic rule, its Christian population annihilated, its Jews reduced to almost nothing.