ISRAEL vs PALESTINE
Just Who Does It Belong To Part 1
This subject has been rolling around in my head, well, since the 7 October Massacre and kidnapping After witnessing all of the noise of the Anti-Israel/Jew demonstrations around the world, and a piece by another writer here on Medium Dylan Combellick, asking a lot of questions:
So now I am finally sitting down and writing this, and initially, I thought that it would be sort of a long piece. As this is not an easy subject to write about with a lot of moving parts as they say. So, to do it some justice it will be more than one part.
The subject is not easy to try and discuss, and to try and give simple answers or solutions is impossible (My Opinion). I will attempt to try and shed some light on the subject by providing some facts that somehow have been ignored, or just plain not told to push an agenda. With the facts that I will provide, it is up to you to make up your mind.
A couple of problems that I see are one, there are a lot of people out there who tend to look at a certain conflict at the current time frame, like a photograph, and move on from there. Secondly, most really do not have any or little knowledge of the region or Israel, only what they hear. How many of you out there have ever lived in Israel or even in the region longer than just a trip? How many speak the languages?
I know that there are many typical knee-jerk relations and finger-pointing, but we need to take a look further back, years, decades, and in this case, even centuries. I am going to attempt to not only shed some light but pull the curtain back some that we can see who the players were and are.
We have all heard a lot about Palestine, the Palestinian People, how they are the indigenous people of the region and have lived there for centuries and all sorts of things. So what and where is Palestine? When was it formed? Seems that there is bit of a different story if you read below.
The term “Palestine” is believed to be derived from the Philistines, an Aegean people who, in the twelfth century BCE, settled along the Mediterranean coastal plain — now Israel and the Gaza Strip. In the second century CE, after crushing the last Jewish revolt, the Romans first applied the name Palaestina to Judea (the southern portion of what is now called the West Bank) in an attempt to minimize Jewish identification with the land of Israel. The Arabic word Filastin is derived from this Latin name. (1)
By the Philistines way way back.
Palestine was never an exclusively Arab country, although Arabic gradually became the language of most of the population after the Muslim invasions of the seventh century. No independent Arab or Palestinian state ever existed in Palestine. When the distinguished Arab- American historian, Princeton University professor Philip Hitti, testified against partition before the Anglo-American Committee in 1946, he said, “There is no such thing as ‘Palestine’ in history, abso lutely not.”5 Prior to partition, Palestinian Arabs did not view themselves as hav ing a separate identity. When the First Congress of Muslim- Christian Associations met in Jerusalem in February 1919 to choose Palestinian representatives for the Paris Peace Conference, they adopted the fol lowing resolution: We consider Palestine as part of Arab Syria, as it has never been separated from it at any time. We are connected with it by national, religious, linguistic, natural, economic, and geo graphical bonds.6 Similarly, the King- Crane commission found that Christian and Muslim Arabs opposed any plan to create a country called “Palestine,” because it was viewed as recognition of Zionist claims.7 In 1937, a local Arab leader, Auni Bey Abdul Hadi, told the Peel Commission, which ultimately suggested the partition of Palestine: “There is no such country as Palestine! ‘Palestine’ is a term the Zionists invented! There is no Palestine in the Bible. Our country was for centuries part of Syria.”8 The representative of the Arab Higher Committee to the United Nations echoed this view in a statement to the General Assembly in May 1947, which said Palestine was part of the Province of Syria and the Arabs of Palestine did not comprise a separate political entity. A few years later, Ahmed Shuqeiri, later the chairman of the PLO, told the Security Council: “It is common knowledge that Palestine is nothing but southern Syria.” (2)
Myths And Facts A Guide to the Arab Israeli Conflict Michael G Bard
So, who is telling the truth here? Makes one wonder. So this made up land of Palestine really may not have been. Makes one wonder, at least it does me.
Sure Mahmoud Abbas claiming that the Palestinians are descendants of the Canaanites, not really.
https://www.algemeiner.com/2019/08/25/the-myth-of-palestinian-canaanites/
Dimitri Diliani of the Fatah Revolutionary Council likewise declared that “the Palestinian people [are] descended from the Canaanite tribe of the Jebusites that inhabited the ancient site of Jerusalem as early as 3200 BCE.”8 But is that really true? Are the Palestinians really the indigenous people of the area that the State of Israel now occupies, and were they really displaced by the Israelis? There is no trace of support for such an idea in history. No archeological evidence, or evidence of any other kind, has ever been found to substantiate a link between the ancient Canaanites or Jebusites and the modern-day Palestinians.9 The land that is now the State of Israel corresponds roughly to the lands known in ancient times as Judea, Samaria, Idumea, and Galilee, and was inhabited by Jews. In A.D. 134, the Romans expelled the Jews from the area in retaliation for a revolt against their rule led by the self-appointed messiah Simon Bar Kokhba; as an insult to the Jews and to efface any traces of their connection connection to the land, they renamed Jerusalem Aelia Capitolina and the region Palestine, a name they plucked from the Bible, as it was the name of the Israelites’ ancient enemies, the Philistines. Subsequently, Palestine was the name of a region but never of a people or of a political entity. The area that was Palestine was part of the Eastern Roman (Byzantine) Empire until it was conquered by the Arabs. Later it came under the control of the Turks, who ruled it until the Ottoman Empire collapsed at the end of World War I.
Spencer, Robert. The Palestinian Delusion: The Catastrophic History of the Middle East Peace Process (p. 9). Bombardier Books. Kindle Edition.
Until the return of the Jews to Israel, it was nothing but a desolate land, filled with nothing until the 19th century. Even Arab leaders welcomed the Jews back in the beginning.
The Arabs, especially the educated among us, look with deep est sympathy on the Zionist movement . . . We will wish the Jews a hearty welcome home . . . We are working together for a reformed and revised Near East and our two movements complete one another. The Jewish movement is nationalist and not imperialist. And there is room in Syria for us both. Indeed, I think that neither can be a real success without the other
Naomi Comay, Arabs Speak Frankly on the Arab- Israeli Conflict (Printing Miracle Ltd., 2005), 8.
I have read of reports that the land of Israel, was not much, just desert, sandy hills, and weeds. Ruins of houses, buildings, and no farming. There are things that I have read, and too many to list going back to the 15th Century saying how the land looked, abandoned, no farmer except a little. Seems that when the Ottoman Empire took over that the majority of landowners were absentee owners with sharecroppers.
As described by Mark Twain below.
Palestine sits in sackcloth and ashes. Over it broods the spell of a curse that has withered its fields and fettered its energies. Where Sodom and Gomorrah reared their domes and towers, that solemn sea now floods the plain, in whose bitter waters no living thing exists — over whose waveless surface the blistering air hangs motionless and dead — about whose borders nothing grows but weeds, and scattering tufts of cane, and that treacherous fruit that promises refreshment to parching lips, but turns to ashes at the touch. Nazareth is forlorn; about that ford of Jordan where the hosts of Israel entered the Promised Land with songs of rejoicing, one finds only a squalid camp of fantastic Bedouins of the desert; Jericho the accursed, lies a moldering ruin, to-day, even as Joshua’s miracle left it more than three thousand years ago; Bethlehem and Bethany, in their poverty and their humiliation, have nothing about them now to remind one that they once knew the high honor of the Saviour’s presence; the hallowed spot where the shepherds watched their flocks by night, and where the angels sang Peace on earth, good will to men, is untenanted by any living creature, and unblessed by any feature that is pleasant to the eye. Renowned Jerusalem itself, the stateliest name in history, has lost all its ancient grandeur, and is become a pauper village; the riches of Solomon are no longer there to compel the admiration of visiting Oriental queens; the wonderful temple which was the pride and the glory of Israel, is gone, and the Ottoman crescent is lifted above the spot where, on that most memorable day in the annals of the world, they reared the Holy Cross. The noted Sea of Galilee, where Roman fleets once rode at anchor and the disciples of the Saviour sailed in their ships, was long ago deserted by the devotees of war and commerce, and its borders are a silent wilderness; Capernaum is a shapeless ruin; Magdala is the home of beggared Arabs; Bethsaida and Chorazin have vanished from the earth, and the “desert places” round about them where thousands of men once listened to the Saviour’s voice and ate the miraculous bread, sleep in the hush of a solitude that is inhabited only by birds of prey and skulking foxes.
Spencer, Robert. The Palestinian Delusion: The Catastrophic History of the Middle East Peace Process (p. 15). Bombardier Books. Kindle Edition.
Of all the lands there are for dismal scenery, I think Palestine must be the prince… Renowned Jerusalem itself, the stateliest name in history, has lost all its ancient grandeur, and is become a pauper village; the riches of Solomon are no longer there to compel the admiration of visiting Oriental queens; the wonderful temple which was the pride and the glory of Israel, is gone… Palestine is desolate and unlovely. And why should it be otherwise?… Palestine is no more of this work-day world. It is sacred to poetry and tradition — it is dream-land.
Mark Twain, Innocents Abroad, Chapter 56
Sir John William Dawson stated the obvious in 1888 when he said: “No nation has been able to establish itself as a nation in Palestine up to this day. No national union and no national spirit has prevailed there. The motley impoverished tribes which have occupied it have held it as mere tenants at will, temporary landowners, evidently waiting for those entitled to the permanent possession of the soil.”50 The wait would not be much longer. An English clergyman, Reverend Samuel Manning, described the Plain of Sharon as “a land without inhabitants” that “might support an immense population.”51 That immense population was beginning to come.
Spencer, Robert. The Palestinian Delusion: The Catastrophic History of the Middle East Peace Process (p. 16). Bombardier Books. Kindle Edition.
What I have posted just scratches the surface, there is a lot more out there, but I wanted to get your interest to maybe look more. There are a lot of questions that need to be asked as well as answered. Also there is a lot mor3e sources I could have posted, but it would look like some Thesis Bibliography. If you have questions or would like to know more, please ask and I will provide the sources and quotes.
I appreciated all who read, so please leave a comment, or a clap.
