This is the foundation of all issues. Many people believe that Palestine was an Arab-Muslim nation that was forced to surrender part of its territory. What does the evidence say? After World War I, there were good reasons why Britain and the League of Nations saw it differently than the likes of Syria and Iraq.
Sections: The name; History; How the Arabs viewed it; Who was first?; Jewish conquest of Canaan; What the Koran says.
(This page doubles as Chronology A.)
The name
For about 200 years through 136 CE, millions of Jews died at the hands of the Romans, either by war, mass slaughter or persecution. Many others were sold into slavery or exiled. At the end, nearly every village in Judea was razed, Jerusalem was destroyed and the Second Temple was burned. To complete their mission to erase Judaism, the Romans changed the name of Judea to Syria Palaestina, which evolved into “Palestine” (and “Filastin” in Arabic).
The Panarion of Epiphanius of Salamis Books II and III (Sects 47-80 De Fide),
page 133 – approx. 350 CE. Full page, Archive.org (needs login).
Book cover for The Land of Israel: A Journal of Travels in Palestine – 1865
by H.B. Tristram. Archive.org.
The Romans based the word on the Philistines since they were an enemy of the Jews. An Aegean people (non-Arabs between Greece and Turkey), they invaded in the Late Bronze Age and settled in the coastal area south and north of Gaza, or from the Negev Desert to Tel Aviv. Greek and Latin writers called the area Philistia.
The Jewish Kingdoms and the Philistines circa 830 BCE. Full map and credits.
A name deriving from the Philistines was never applied to the whole region and the Philistines disappeared from the history books centuries before the Romans.
History
From 1,300 BCE until after the Romans, all or most of the country was known as the Kingdom of Israel and Kingdom of Judah, Judea and Samaria, Zion or Biblical Israel (Eretz Yisrael in Hebrew), though the Jews didn’t control all the land in all this time. Before them, it was called Canaan.
Encyclopedia Americana 1922, Vol. 21, page 197 (221 from file). Loc.gov.
That some say “Palestine” for eras before the Romans is either a mistake or bias. Going back to the time before the Jews, saying Canaan or “ancient Israel” is much more accurate than “ancient Palestine”.
Jesus Christ was born, and lived, in Judea/Israel. He was a religious Jew.
The Jewish connection
For the longest time, the Jewish history of the land was primary and the Arabs acknowledged it on many occasions. Here is one from 1922-
Minutes from a meeting between Jewish and Arab leaders, quoted in
UN Special Committee on Palestine – 1947, A_364 Add-2, p. 196. UN.org.
Most prominent were the areas named Judea and Samaria (much of what some call the West Bank), despite Christians during the Crusades who also acted to sever the Jewish attachment to the land.
The UN Partition Plan / Resolution 181 (III)- 1947, p. 143 (13 of file). UN.org.
F. von Rappard’s map (from New World Cartographic) – 1869. Full map.
Similar:
Palestina Antiqua map – 1845. iStock.
S. Augustus Mitchell’s map (from Map and Arts) – 1867. Full map.
The Examiner (London) – Feb. 1, 1868. Full page.
The Guardian (UK) – Feb. 22, 1937. Full page.
Similar:
The Morning Post (London) – May 19, 1851. Clip, full page.
The Brooklyn Daily Eagle (USA) – Feb. 19, 1859. Clip, full page.
The Liverpool Mercury (UK) – Sep. 19, 1865. Clip, full page.
The Times (London) – April 7, 1870. Clip, full page.
Baltimore Sun (USA) – Nov. 3, 1891. Clip, full page.
Washington Evening Star – Oct. 28, 1925. Clip, full page.
Newsweek magazine (USA) – July 19, 1937. Clip, full page.
The Jordan River derives from the Torah that calls it Yarden. Lebanon is from Levanun. Arabs used to call Jerusalem and then the Temple Mount Bayt al-Maqdis, from the Hebrew Beit HaMikdash (House of Holiness); see it on the map below with Filastin. Arab villages everywhere had names with Jewish roots.
Biblical Researches in Palestine by Robinson and Smith- 1838, p. 16. Archive.
Concerning an area around Beit Nettif, 20km southwest of Jerusalem.
More: Page 34, 38…and many others.
In 1714, an esteemed scholar and cartographer named Adriaan Reland (also Hedriani Relandi) published Palaestina ex monumentis veteribus illustrata that was an expansive account of Palestine. He listed hundreds of settlements and places with names that had Hebrew origins. An English translation of the Latin book has not been found so here’s an article about it.
Mr. Reland knew Arabic and Hebrew (and Greek…). Archive.org.
Click for our response to the arguments about his book.
Foes try to dismiss Palaestina because Mr. Reland did not visit the region. On its website, Brill- the leading international academic publisher- quotes Jean Le Clerc, a major theologian, biblical scholar, and journalist at the time: “According to Le Clerc, ‘nobody before made such an effort in this subject matter as Mr. Reland’, who examined the whole body of ‘Hebrew, Arabic, Greek, Latin sources’, along with records from ancient and modern travellers’ in order to provide ‘numerous clarifications’ of locations and places of previously unclear provenance.”
“Modern travellers.” Mr. Reland had extensive discussions with agents, merchants, pilgrims and others who did visit.
We don’t argue that every point in the book is 100% accurate. Some origins of town names are debatable, but there’s no doubt that at least the vast majority were based on Judaism.
Concerning the population, he wrote that most were Jews, followed by Christians and a minimal Muslim presence, primarily Bedouins. Other people say Muslims were the majority at this time with 150,000. How to understand the discrepancy? Perhaps many lived in a broader definition of Palestine, as some included Trans-Jordan. Or perhaps there were more Bedouins that Reland did not learn of because it was dangerous for outsiders- even fellow Arabs- to travel south where most Bedouins camped.
We feel the argument is a distraction. Even accepting the perspective that Muslims numbered 150,000 does not change the fact that Judaism and the land were intertwined and that the small number of Muslims did not mean they had a right to sovereignty over all the land.
More:
Tour guide blog, JNS, IsraelToday.
For those who know German, there is an old book.
After the Roman conquest came the Byzantine Empire, the Crusades, Muslims from various caliphates outside Palestine, the Egyptian Mamluks (non-Arab, mostly Muslim, 1250-1517), the Ottoman Empire (non-Arab Muslim Turks 1516-1918), and Britain after the Allied victory in World War I.
Muslim conquest
Islam and the precursor of the modern Arabic language originated in the area that is today Western Saudi Arabia and entered Syria-Palestine with the conquest that ended in 640 CE. (It was colonialism- more on Page #2.)
Empires and caliphates always covered much of the Middle East. They had major divisions and Palestine was never one of them. Muslims from the region of Palestine were never the rulers of such an empire. No city, not even Jerusalem, was ever the capital of one. The small, unofficial borders shifted slightly over the centuries.
The major divisions of the 9th-century Abbassid Caliphate.
By Cattette. Full map and credits.
A closer look at the Abbassid Caliphate shows Palestine/Filastin as a province of Syria and encompassing about a third of its post-World War I shape.
By Constantine Plakidas. Full map and credits.
- From 1099-1291, Western Christians of the Crusades had much more than the local Muslims ever did- the Kingdom of Jerusalem, a polity that covered most of Palestine’s post-WWI incarnation.
1250-1382 Bahri Dynasty (modern borders in yellow).
By Arab League at English Wikipedia. Full map and credits.
Ottoman Empire in 1683 and 1914.
Library, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. Full map.
The Ottomans had eyalets (provinces) that were divided into sanjaks (administrative zones) and Palestine was not a name of any one. They used the name in other cases and it referred to the Sanjak of Jerusalem.
In 1867, the Jerusalem Sanjak was separated from the province of Syria and reported directly to Turkey. The move was not about autonomy for the locals, but security, politics due to a growing European presence and other factors.
In the city of Jerusalem at this time, Jews were the plurality of the population. To the Arab-Muslims, the small shape of Palestine had barely changed since 640.
Only in 1915, after Britain had declared war, did the Ottomans count the two sanjaks to the north as part of the Palestine region.
Syria and Palestine: Great Britain Foreign Office Historical Section – 1920, p. 2. Archive.
The Palestine that most people think of (“From the river to the sea”) was formed between 1915 and 1922, after the creations of Lebanon, Syria and Trans-Jordan. While some Westerners of old used the term Palestine for a larger area, Arabs and Muslims who say this are engaging in historical revisionism.
How the Arabs viewed it
After the Allied victory in World War I, most people in Syria, Western Palestine, Eastern Palestine (aka Trans-Jordan) and the area that became Lebanon wished for a Greater Syria to be in federation with the rest of the Arab world.
Associated Press (in Washington Evening Star) – August 30, 1919. Full page.
Behind The Silken Curtain by Bartly C. Crum – 1947, page 25. Archive.org.
Archbishop Antonios Bashear, Toronto Star – November 6, 1939. Full page.
M. Chekri Gamen, Syrian Commission at the Paris Peace Conference of 1919.
In “My Diary at the Conference of Paris” by David Hunter Miller, 1924, p.414. Link.
Also see p. 405 for more on the Syria-Arabia divide.
Even years later…
Associated Press (in Buffalo Evening News) – June 17, 1949. Full page.
Similar:
Associated Press (in The Toronto Star) – September 12, 1922. Clip, full page.
“Syria and Lebanon: A Political Essay” by A.H. Hourani, 1931, p. 2. Archive.org.
New York Times – June 1, 1956. Link.
More:
Article from a former US Proseuctor and UCLA Professor.
The other camp, headed by the recently created Kingdom of the Hejaz (Western Saudi Arabia), viewed the whole region as one giant Arab state, or pan-Arabia.
Washington Evening Star – August 17, 1919. Full page.
Washington Evening Star – July4, 1922. Full page.
Arab Covenant by the Arab Congress – December 13, 1931 in
Survey Of International Affairs 1934 by Arnold J. Toynbee, p. 107. Archive.
A smaller number of Arabs saw Palestine as being part of Trans-Jordan. Nobody was talking about creating a new Arab entity called Palestine.
Both visions are further proof that Palestine was not an independent or sovereign state or anything along the lines of Egypt or Iraq/Mesopotamia. The territory had a unique history.
Britain’s Royal Commission Report (aka Peel) – 1937, page 40. Archive.org.
Britain’s Lord Milner speaking in the House of Lords, 1923.
Ibid., p. 41. Full page, Archive.org.
Middle East Diary 1917-1956 by Colonel R. Meinertzhagen, p. 162. Full page, Archive.org (needs login). He was British and pro-Zionism.
All together, this is one of the reasons why, after World War I, Britain and the League of Nations supported the reconstitution of the Jewish homeland.
Who was first, Arabs or Jews?
Map of the Arabian Peninsula, aka Arabia, by M.Bitton – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0. (“Israel” added for clarity.) Full map.
Syrian Desert insert and Levant insert from Britannica.
The Jews had sovereignty 1,600 years before the birth of Islam. Between Arabs and Muslims, the latter is the one that matters because the violent opposition to Zionism that began after World War I was based on an extremist interpretation of dar-Islam.
For those who wish to go further…
The Jews entered Canaan in 1273 BCE and the first record of an Arab tribe in the Levant (not necessarily the part that became Israel) is from the Assyrians in 853 BCE, or 420 years after the Jews.
The only Arab people before then, the Bedouins, were from the Arabian Peninsula and Syrian Desert. The region with Lebanon, Syria, Israel/Palestine, much of Jordan and other areas is the Levant and only during the Ottoman Empire was it considered an extension of Arabia. Even if the Bedouins traveled into what became Israel, they were nomads so it would be foolish to argue that on this potential, miniscule, impermanent basis the modern Palestinians have a right to sovereignty over the land. (More about the population on the next page.)
The first Arabic group to have political power in part of Judea was the Nabataeans in the 4th century BCE. With a capital in Petra, their kingdom stretched over most of today’s Jordan, parts of Saudi Arabia and Syria, and at one point the southern half of Israel. They were vanquished by the Romans in 106 CE and, through that war and assimilation, their identity dissolved.
Later, the Ghassanid Arabs (or Jafnids) were a kingdom of tribes who originated in South Arabia and migrated to the Levant. Their domain lasted from the 3rd century until 636 CE and encompassed a bit of Northern Israel, along with all of Jordan, about a third of Syria and more. They became a client state of the Byzantine Empire (aka Eastern Roman Empire) and converted to Christianity.
By the 4th century, many Arabs in the Levant were Christian.
The ancient peoples in the region- Canaanites, Phoenicians, Edomites, Amorites, Arameans, etc.- were not Arab. They were Semetic, which today refers to a linguistic family and more broadly to the nations who descended from the Biblical Noah’s son, Shem. Arabs and Jews are Semetic. The Sumerians, Hittites and Philistines were not Semetic. Jews descend from the patriarch Isaac, son of Abraham and Sarah, and Arabs descend from Ishmael, his other son with the maidservant Hagar. (Islam rewrote Jewish history by switching the roles of the two.)
The Jewish conquest of Canaan
For the traditional Jewish perspective, here are two articles that explain it well: Aish (brief and practical) and Chabad (deeper).
The highlights: 1) The Canaanite nations were given chances to make peace with the Jews or to migrate, as God preferred to see them live. 2) They were shockingly immoral. 3) The Jews failed God’s directive because annihilation was not in their nature.
For those who dismiss any talk of God when it comes to the conflict, it’s important to note that Islam believes in the same God as Judaism and that the conflict has always been about the Muslim radicals violently opposing Jewish autonomy on even an inch of land. (More on the next page.)
What the Koran says about Israel
There are different opinions amongst respected scholars. For the Koran supporting the Jewish right to the Holy Land, there are two articles- Muhammad Al-Hussaini and Dr. Tim Orr. For the opposing view, there’s Robert Spencer, who also highlights the antisemitism in the Koran.
Either way, it’s worth noting that the Koran does not use the term “Palestine” for the Holy Land- and it was written about 500 years after the Romans defeated the last Jewish rebellion.
Next: Page #2: The Arab-Muslims in Old Palestine: Settlers, immigrants, tribes, growth due to Zionism and not Palestinians. (It doubles as Chronology B.)
Or back to Home for the top issues.