WHEN DID ISRAEL BECOME PALESTINE?
Was there a Palestine — or an Israel — before 1947–1948? There is a biblical land called The Kingdom of Israel. But I’ll start with later periods to avoid discussions of “what Bible” or “who wrote it.” I was looking for the origins of this place called “Historic Palestine”. Because it is such a hot button. Here’s what I found.
For six hundred years, the 1400s until 1918, the Ottoman Empire comprised lands in parts of Europe, Asia and Africa. For six centuries it was at the center of interactions between Eastern and Western civilizations.
It was, for the most part, Ottoman Turks who controlled the empires’ many disparate sectors. Turkey was just one of the forty-three modern countries that were ‘mapped out’ (as usual by the victors) when the Ottoman Empire was defeated in WWI. Others included Greece, Italy, Hungary, Morocco and Romania. And the creation of the modern Arab world including: Libya, Syria, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Israel, Syria and Jordan — all from the former Ottoman Empire.
Only one of the forty-three has received outsized attention about its’ borders and even its right to exist. Why?
I looked for findings of a people in a land called Palestine. Wiki has the equivalent of fifteen pages of historical references. (Accompanied by fifteen more ‘pages’ of footnotes.) * Many are accounts from traveler’s going as far back as BCE — Before the Common Era. I skipped ahead to the 1400s. I listed a small fraction of these references below to demonstrate a region with a diversity of religions, place names, ethnicities and languages. I cherry picked; you’re welcome to do the same.
Summarized, I found references to place names familiar and unfamiliar. They’re a sprawling mix that covers broad areas including those now contested in Israel, Gaza and the West Bank. There’s The Holy Land, Judaea, Syria-Palaestina, Samaria, Phœnicia and Phiiistim. That last is always peopled by Philistines. Canaan is often mentioned.
In addition to the Philistines, the various groups of people in these lands are called Arabs, the Hebrews and Two kinds of Jews. One writer describes women, “The white Veil covering the head and face, and falling over the shoulders, is worn by all the females in Syria and Palestine, except the Jewesses. … I never saw any of them with veils; and was informed that it is the general practice of the Jewesses … to go with their faces uncovered; they are the only females there who do so”.
So, six hundred years across vast swaths of land with a multitude of ethnicities, religions and languages! So a multitude of references and mash-ups, sources and contested attributions, assertions and descriptions.
To proclaim now that there was a ‘Historic Palestine’ that was the land of the Palestinians is at the very least an oversimplification and at worst a fabrication.
If we have to resort to heated assertions of only one possible truth we gin up anger and even worse (violence). It forecloses critical thinking, discussions, or disputes that can be settled with some compromise/agreement if this is what the parties want to do.
Now watch out here for anger, name calling and other ‘tells’ of an ideology.
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Looking for Historic Palestine and the Palestinians. Here is the short list I selected from thirty pages.
1400 A kingdom of Judaea and a kingdom of Samaria and a land called Phiiistim (and the people, the Philistines.)
1600 Palaestina et Phienice cum parte Coele Syria
1742–1777 — Several Jewish Hassidic leaders (including Rabbi Abraham Gershon of Kitob and Menachem Mendel of Vitebsk) move to the Holy Land with many followers of the Baal Shem Tov. Historians mark their arrival as the beginning of the current Jewish Hassidic community in the region.
1746: Modern History Or the Present State of All Nations: “Palestine, or the Holy Land, sometimes also called Judea …
1763: Voltaire, The Works of M. de Voltaire: Additions to the essay on general history. “The same may be said of the prohibition of eating pork, blood, or the flesh of beasts dying of any disease; these are precepts of health. The flesh of swine in particular is a very unwholesome food in those hot countries, as well as in the Palestine that lies in their neighbourhood.
1779: George Sale, Ancient Part of Universal History: “How Judæa came to be called also Phœnice, or Phœnicia …
1791: Giovanni Mariti, Travels Through Cyprus, Syria, and Palestine; with a General History of the Levant. Translated from the Italian: Of The Hebrews Two kinds of Jews are found in Syria and Palestine; one of which are originally from these countries, and the other foreigners. A diversity of religious systems divides them, as well as all the other nations on the earth, …
1822: Robert Richardson, Travels Along the Mediterranean and Parts Adjacent: In Company with the Earl of Belmore, During the Years 1816–17–18: The white Veil covering the head and face, and falling over the shoulders, is worn by all the females in Syria and Palestine, except the Jewesses. […] I never saw any of them with veils; and was informed that it is the general practice of the Jewesses in Jerusalem to go with their faces uncovered; they are the only females there who do so.
1838: Humphry Davy, The collected works of Sir Humphry Davy: Palestine, a name supposed to be derived from the ancient Philistine coast, has been applied, from the earliest of modern ages, to the territory anciently assigned as the portion of the twelve tribes
1880s: The Ottoman government issues a number of decrees to foreign governments, intended to limit Zionist immigration, land purchases and settlement. The decrees refer to “Palestine,” but the term is not defined.
1898: A Description of the Holy Land: “the Palestinian peasant waits impatiently for winter to come, for the season’s rain to moisten his fossilized fields.” It has been proposed that this represents the first instance in modern history where the term ‘Palestinian’ or ‘Filastini’ appears in Arabic.
1911: Falastin newspaper was founded in Jaffa by Palestinian Christia.
1936 Though Palestine is not an Arab word and might therefore fairly serve for Jews as well as Arabs, Eretz Israel (Land of Israel) should be also accepted as the official translation of “Palestine,”
‘On the one hand on the other’. With such vast lands and so many disparate peoples it becomes difficult to declare that ‘this particular spot was the land of Historic Palestine and the People are the descendants of Palestinians’. And that now they are all entitled, (we Palestinians) to this land we have identified as Palestine, as it always was and shall be.
This is an erasure of quite some scope.
Is this how Israel became Palestine? For Palestinians?
Who lived in what is now Israel, along with Jews? I thought they were Arabs. When Israel was declared a state (and at that time Arab leaders declared war against the new state) the Arab states expelled almost 800,000 Jews living variously in Jordan, Egypt and more. And they told the Arabs living in this new state that they were risking their lives if they stayed, and to leave with the reassurance they would be able to go back because the Arab states were going to win their war against this Israel.
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* Timeline of the Palestine region From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
- “Arab countries have a rich diversity of ethnic, linguistic, and religious communities. These include Kurds, Armenians, Berbers and others.”. Ethnic Groups in the Middle East — Wikipedia
2. Note: Feel free to critique sources; and of course to do your own research.
