The Land of Palestine
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The Land of Palestine
- 5000 years of History [primary source: An Atlas of Palestine]
3000 BC The land was inhabited by the Canaannites and known as the Land of Canaan. They settled mainly along the
coastline.
1468 BC The
Egyptians conquered the Canaanites at the battle of Armageddon in Magiddo, Palestine.
Coincidentally, this is the time Israel enters the Promised land.
1200 BC The Sea People attack Palestine.
They become known as the Philistines. They rebuild Gaza,
Ashdod, Ashqal, Edron and Gath.
(Map1)
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1055 BC David
becomes King of Israel
and conquers neighboring inhabitants. (Map2)
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1015 BC Solomon
becomes King of Israel.
975 BC The Kingdom is divided and the land becomes know as Judea and Samaria.
722 BC The Assyrians defeat the Kingdom
of Israel. They replace
the Israelites with people from Babylon,
Cuthah, Ava, Hamath. (II Ki 17:18,24) (Map3)
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586 BC The
Babylonians destroy Jerusalem, burn down the
temple and conquer Philistia and Phoenicia. (II Ki 25:1-11) (Map2)
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539 BC The Persians destroy Babylon
and occupy the areas under Babylonian control. King Cyrus permits Jews to
return to Jerusalem.
(Ezra 1:1-3)
332 BC The Greeks, led by Alexander the Great, attack the Persians and rule Palestine.
141 BC The Jewish Maccabees revolt and set up an independent state.
63 BC The Romans, led by Pompey the Great, invade and conquer Palestine.
66 AD Jews revolt, the Temple
is destroyed. Romans rename Judea Syria Palaistina.
. 636 AD The Muslim Arab armies occupy Palestine
and capture Jerusalem.
1099 AD The Crusaders invade and eventually establish control over Palestine. Jews fight
alongside the Arabs against the Crusaders at Jerusalem
and Haifa.
1187 AD At the battle of Hittin, the Crusader army is defeated in Palestine.
1290 AD The last of the Crusaders are expelled from Palestine
by the Mamluks, [men of slave origin, chiefly from Russian and Central Asia, also spelled Mamelukes].
1516 AD The Ottoman Turkish army invades and conquers Palestine.
1831 AD Egypt invades and
rules Palestine
for 9 years.
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"In the
twelve and a half centuries between the Arab conquest in the seventh century and
the beginnings of the Jewish return in the 1880’s, Palestine was laid waste.
Its ancient canal and irrigation systems were destroyed and the wondrous
fertility of which the Bible spoke vanished into desert and desolation…under
the Ottoman empire of the Turks, the policy
of disfoliation continued; the hillsides were denuded of trees and the
valleys robbed of their topsoil". [2].
"In 1590, a ‘simple English visitor’ to Jerusalem wrote, ‘Nothing there
is to be seen but a little of the old walls, which is yet remaining and all
the rest is grass, moss and weeds’." [quote rendered in modern English
by Ron Masek] [2].
"Nazareth
was, in 1697, an inconsiderable village…a few poor cottages…nothing but a
vast and spacious ruin. Nabulus [Shechem] consisted of two streets with many
people and Jericho
was a ‘poor nasty village’". [2]. (Map4)
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"In the
mid-1700s, British Archeologist Thomas Shaw wrote that the land in Palestine was lacking in
people to till its fertile soil". [2].
"Count Constantine Frangois Volney, [eighteenth-century French author
and historian] wrote of Palestine
as the ‘ruined’ and ‘desolate’ land." [2].
"J.S. Buckingham, in his 1816 visit, described Ramle, [Ramla],…‘where,
as throughout the greater part of Palestine,
the ruined portion seemed more extensive than that which was
inhabited’." [2]. (Map 6)
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"In 1840,
an observer traveling in Palestine wrote…the
once populous area between Hebron and Bethlehem was ‘now
abandoned and desolate’ with ‘dilapidated towns’. Jerusalem consisted of a ‘large number of
houses…in a dilapidated and ruinous state’. ….the masses in Jerusalem were estimated at less than
15,000 inhabitants, of whom more than half were Jews." [2]. (Map 4)
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"stirring
scenes…occur in the valley [Jezreel] no more. There is not a solitary village
throughout its whole extent not for thirty miles in either direction. There
are two or three small clusters of Bedouin tents, but not a single permanent
habitation. One may ride ten miles hereabouts and not see ten human
beings". [3] (Map1)
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"…come to
Galilee for [the sort of solitude to make one dreary]…these unpeopled
deserts, these rusty mounds of barrenness, that never, never, do shake the
glare from their harsh outlines, and fade and faint into vague perspective;
that melancholy ruin of Capernaum; this stupid village of Tiberias,
slumbering under its six funeral palms…we reached Tabor, [on Western slope of
Mr. Tabor], safely…we never saw a human being on the whole route. [3]. (Map 4)
"Nazareth is forlorn…Jericho the accursed lies a moldering ruin today,
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 Savior’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…Bethsaida and Chorazin have vanished from the earth,
and the desert places round about them, where thousands of men once listened
to the Savior’s voice & ate the miraculous bread, sleep in the hush of a
solitude that is inhabited only by birds of prey and skulking foxes."
[3]. (Map 4)
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"Jaffa, a
French traveler wrote late in the nineteenth century, was still a ruin…Haifa, to the north, had
6000 souls and ‘nothing remarkable about it’". [2]. (Map 5)
"Another Frenchman, the author of France’s
foremost late-nineteenth-century Holy Land
Guidebook, commended. Haifa
‘can be crossed in five minutes’. The city of Acre,
[Akko, across from Haifa],
he judged that magnificent port was commercially idle." [2]. (Map 5)
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"Reverend Samuel Manning, mourned the atrophy of the coastal plain, the Sharon Plain. ‘But where are the inhabitants?
This fertile plain, which might support an immense population, is almost a
solitude…day by day we were to learn afresh the lesson now forced upon us,
that the denunciations of ancient prophecy have been fulfilled to the very
letter…"the land is left void and desolate and without
inhabitants"’". [2]. (Map 1)
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Various
observers and commentators have used the following words to describe the land of Palestine. "a desolate
country"…"wretched desolation and neglect"…"almost
abandoned
now"…"unoccupied"…"uninhabited"…"thinly
populated". [2].
"Colonel C.R. Conder pronounced the Palestine of the 1880s a ‘ruined
land’ and commented that as so far as the Arab race is concerned, it appears
to be decreasing rather than otherwise." [2].
"Pierre Loti, the noted French writer, wrote in 1895 of his visit to the
land: ‘I traveled through sad Galilee in the
spring, and I found it silent….’ In the vicinity of the Biblical Mount Gilboa,
‘As elsewhere, as everywhere in Palestine,
city and palaces have returned to the dust; This melancholy of abandonment
weights on all the Holy Land’". [2]. (Map1)
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"David Landes
summarized the causes of the shriveling number of inhabitants: ‘As a result
of the centuries of Turkish neglect and misrule, following on the earlier
ravages of successive conquerors, the land had been given over to sand,
marsh, the anopheles mosquito, clan feuds, and Bedouin marauders. A
population of several millions had shrunk to less than one tenth that number
– perhaps a quarter of a million around 1800, and 300,000 at
mid-century.’" [2].
1917 AD During WWI, the British entered Palestine
in October and defeated the Turkish troops. The Balfour Declaration by Arthur
Balfour, British Foreign Secretary, declares support for a Jewish Homeland in
Palestine.
After 400 years of Ottoman rule collapsed at the end of WWI, Britain and France carved up the area into
spheres of control.
1922 AD Britain obtained a
mandate to administer Palestine and
Transjordan form the League of Nations. France had a mandate for Lebanon and Syria.
1923 AD In an Anglo/French great-power play, the border between Syria and "Palestine" was established. Syria
did not exist as a political entity until after WWI. Until then it was a
province in the Ottoman empire with ill
defined borders. [FLAME, Message 49] { (Map 6), note Lebanon, Jordan
and Syria.
Compare with (Map 7)
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1930 AD As Nazi atrocities convulsed Europe, a tide of Jews pressed into Palestine.
1936 AD Arabs revolt against British rule and Jewish immigration.
1948 AD Britain
gives up its mandate. The establishment of the State of Israel. (Map 5)
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1967 AD Israel occupies the West Bank, East Jerusalem,
Gaza Strip,
Sinai & Golan Heights. (Map 6)
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1978 AD Camp David Accords. President Carter,
Menachem Begin and Anwar Sadat. Israel returns entire Sinai, including oil
fields, in exchange for peace. Egypt
is ostracized by the Arab countries and Sadat is later assassinated.
Excerpts from ADVOCATING FOR ISRAEL 2001 Anti-Defamation League
United Nations Partition Plan (UN Resolution 181) 1947. This plan was to divide
the British Mandate-controlled area of Palestine
into two states, Arab and Jewish. The two states, roughly equal in size and
natural resources, were to cooperate on major economic issues, sharing their
currency, roads and government services. The Jews reluctantly accepted the
partition plan as it did offer sovereignty and control over immigration. The
Palestinian Arabs and the surrounding Arab nations rejected it outright,
refusing to accept the establishment of a Jewish state in the region. (Map 5)
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Thus it was the
Arabs, not the Jews, who prevented the creation of a Palestinian State.
[4]
On May 14, 1948, David Ben-Gurion proclaimed the independence of the State of
Israel.
The State of Israel "will uphold the full social and political equity of
all its citizens, without distinction of race, creed, or sex; will guarantee
full freedom of conscience, worship, education and culture; will safeguard
the sanctity and inviolability of the shrines and Holy Places of all
religions…"
On May 15, 1948, the Arab armies of Egypt,
Syria, Jordan, Iraq,
Saudi Arabia and Lebanon
invaded the new state.
In January, 1949, an Armistice agreements were signed finalizing borders at
the frontlines. Israel
held the 5,600 square miles allotted to it by the UN partition plan plus an
additional 2,500 square miles. Jordan
held the West Bank and the eastern sector of Jerusalem. The Arab states refused to
recognize Israel’s
existence and maintained a total economic, political and social boycott of Israel.
{Compare (Map 5)
and (Map 6)} During the 1948
war, as many as 700,000 Palestinians fled their homes in Israel. 1/3 went to the West
Bank, 1/3 went to the Gaza strip, 1/3 went to Jordan, Lebanon and Syria. The Arab nations refused
to absorb these Palestinians into their populations and they were settled
into refugee camps. Only King Abdullah of Jordan conferred citizenship on
the Palestinians living in Jordan and the West Bank.
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"It is the Arabs, not the Jews, who created the Arab Refugee
Problem". [4].
Neither Jordan nor Egypt
made any attempt to establish a Palestinian state in these territories. In
1950, Jordan formally
annexed the West Bank.
Thus it was the Arabs, not the Jews, who prevented the creation of a Palestinian State. [4]
During the 1967 war, another 250,000 Palestinians fled the West Bank and the Gaza Strip.
Palestinians who stayed in Israel
were made full citizens of the State of Israel.
60,000 to 70,000 Palestinian refugees were repatriated between 1949 and 1967
under a family reunification program.
"Tens of thousands of Palestinian Arabs have gained Israeli citizenship
since 1967 through marriage to an Israeli citizen, Arab or Jewish". [4].
From 1948-1951, as many as 800,000 Jews were expelled or forced to flee from
their native Arab nations. 500,000 fled to Israel and were immediately
absorbed into the nation.
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The Palestine Liberation Organization
(PLO) was founded in 1964. Its Charter contained 33 articles and called for
the destruction of the State of Israel. The PLO is responsible
for numerous acts of terrorism resulting in the deaths of thousands of
civilians. Yasir Arafat was elected PLO Chairman in 1969.
In 1974, the PLO developed the "Phased Plan". Phase 1, accept any
piece of land in Greater Palestine.
Phase 2, exterminate Israel.
[Arafat’s War; How to End It, Charles Krauthammer, Jewish World Review,
8/28/01]
The PLO program calls for the exile of all Jews who arrived after 1917 along
with their descendents. [Mideast website Historical Documents, PLO Charter]
In 1993, the PLO recognized Israel’s
right to exist. Changes in its Charter were ratified but the original charter
is still displayed.
"That pledge of nonviolence, made in Arafat’s famous September 1993
letter to Yitzhak Rabin in the Oslo
accords, the foundation of the whole ‘peace process’, was a fraud and
deception from the very beginning." [Arafat’s War; How to End It,
Charles Krauthammer, Jewish World Review, 8/28/01] Six Day War of 1967. Arab
mobilization and an Egyptian blockade caused Israel
to launch a pre-emptive strike against Egypt. When Jordan and Syria
entered the war, Israel
captured the West Bank and the Golan Heights.
(Map 6)
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The West Bank was the heart of ancient Israel and the site of many
significant events in Jewish history. Shiloh Josh 18:1, Judg 18:31, I Sam 1:3,
4:3-4 Hebron Gen 23, II Sam 2:1-7, 5:1-5 Bethel Gen 12:6-8, 28:10-22, 35:6-7, I
Ki 12:26-29, II Ki 23:1-5, 15-23
Israel immediately stated it would redeploy from territories in return for a
peace agreement with Arab neighbors. Israel’s offer was rebuffed.
On Yom Kippur of 1973, Egypt
and Syria attacked Israel to
regain the land lost in 1967. Caught by surprise, Israel suffered severe losses in
human life, military equipment and territory.
Saudi Arabia instituted an
oil embargo after a massive airlift by the United
States to aid Israel.
Under the Oslo Process, (begun in 1993), Israel agreed to redeploy from Palestinian
population centers in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. Beginning with the West Bank city
of Jericho and a large portion of the Gaza Strip in 1994, there have been a
series of Israeli redeployments totaling 40% of the West Bank and 85% of the
Gaza Strip, with 99% of the Palestinian population under the jurisdiction of
the PLO.
"To keep the Oslo process from collapsing,
both Israeli and U.S.
leaders decided in 1993 to ignore the Palestinian Authority’s daily radio and
TV calls for a renewed war against Israel. In 1995, [videos were]
produced of Arafat’s speeches promoting Jihad (holy war)". [Focus Israel and the
Palestinians, David Bedein, Reform Judaism, Fall 2002]
In July 2000 at Camp David, Prime Minister Barak offered 95% of the West Bank
and 100% of the Gaza
Strip. Chairman Arafat demanded 100% of the West Bank, a complete withdrawal by
Israel
to the pre-1967 lines.
Palestinians insist that refugees have a "right of return" to their
former homes in Israel.
Israel argues that such a return is not viable for such a small state, given
the national security problems it would pose as well as upsetting the country’s
demographic makeup.
Settlements Historically, Judea and Samaria (the
West Bank), is the cradle of Jewish
civilization. Jews lived in the area up until 1948, when the West Bank was
gained by Jordan.
Several of the current West Bank communities
existed prior to 1948. They were overrun by invading Arab armies and those Jews
captured were massacred.
At the time of the Ottoman conquest in 1517, Jews lived in Jerusalem,
Nablus, Hebron,
Safad and in Galilean villages. (Map 6)
(There were an estimated 10,000 Jews in the Safed region in 1500. [4])
Jews sought a new home in the Safed region after their expulsion from Spain
(1492), Lithuania (1495), Portugal, Sicily, and Sardinia (1497), Rhodes (1502),
& Naples (1541).
Hundreds of Hasidic Jews immigrated in 1700 from Eastern
Europe.
"Between 1880 and 1914, over 60,000 Jews entered Palestine,
mostly from Russia, Galicia, Rumania,
and Poland.
The victims of persecution and discrimination, they sought a new homeland and a
new security under Turkish rule. Many settled on wasteland, sand dunes, and
malarial marsh, which they drained, irrigated, and farmed. In 1909, a group of
Jews founded the first entirely Jewish town, Tel Aviv, on the sandhills north
of Jaffa. The
Jews purchased the land piecemeal from European, Turkish, and, (principally),
Arab landlords, mostly at extremely high prices". [4].
Less than 150,000 Jews are settled in the West Bank.
Why shouldn’t they live there? About a million Arabs live in Israel proper.
[FLAME Message 36]
Arab population in Palestine.
The number of Palestinian Arabs living in the area when the Jews began to
arrive en masse in the late 19th century remains a subject of dispute. The
early Zionist pioneers saw the Arab population as small, apolitical, and without
a nationalist element. They therefore believed there would be no friction
between the two communities. They also thought that development of the country
would benefit both peoples and they would thus secure Arab support and
cooperation. Many Arabs migrated to Palestine
in the wake of economic growth stimulated by Jewish immigration, attracted by
new employment opportunities, higher wages, and better living conditions.
Jerusalem
Since King David’s time, Jews have maintained a continuous presence in Jerusalem except for a few
periods when they were forcibly barred from living in the city by foreign
rulers.
Jews have constituted a majority of residents since 1880 and today represent
72% of its population.
The only time Jerusalem
was divided was between 1948 and 1967. Jordan denied Jews access to their holy
sites, including the Western Wall. 58 synagogues in the Jewish quarter were
destroyed and Jewish cemeteries desecrated.
When all Jerusalem was captured in 1967, Israel passed
the Protection of Holy Places Law which guarantees the sanctity of all holy
places and makes it a punishable offence to desecrate or deny access to them.
Christians & Moslems administer their own holy sites.
------ End – Excerpts from ADVOCATING FOR ISRAEL
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Arab Extremists
The Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine
led by George Habash. "Our only aim is a democratic, non-Zionist, Palestine. [Time, June
13, 1969]
"There is not a single democratic Arab state. All of them are tyrannies of
varying degree. Even today, under Israeli administration, the PLO, the Islamic
fundamentalists, and other factions fight for supremacy and ruthlessly murder
each other". [FLAME Message 37]
Hamas. "Israel
is our enemy". Hamas wants an end to the Jewish occupation of historical Palestine. [NY Times,
4/4/02]
Hezbollah (Lebanese Shiite Party of God). After Israel
withdrew from Lebanon,
Hezbollah imported huge new supplies of weapons and began cross-border attacks
on Israel.
[Washington
Post 4/10/02]
The Palestinians (Are the Arab Palestinians a nation and deserving of a
homeland?)
The so-called "Palestinians" are no different from the Arabs living
in the neighboring countries of Lebanon,
Syria and Jordan. They
are undifferentiated in dialect, dress, social customs or any other thing.
[FLAME, Message 15, 36; Myths of the Middle East,
Joseph Farah, 2000 WorldNetDaily]
Palestinian Arabs do have a homeland, it is Jordan. [FLAME, Message 15]
The British divided the country into two parts, giving the land east of the Jordan to the
Hashemite tribes. Transjordan was given
independence by the British in 1946. [FLAME, Message 5]
"Until Jewish immigration into ‘Palestine’
began in earnest in this century, the country was sparsely populated and
underdeveloped. (Mark Twain described the desolation in his book Innocents
Abroad.) Its civilization was that of the Middle Ages. When the Jews came into
the country, they created commercial, agricultural, and industrial
opportunities that acted as a magnet to the Arabs, most of them nomadic". [FLAME,
Message 5]
"Arabs have inhabited Palestine for nearly
1400 years, since the arrival of Islam from the Arabian
Peninsula. The Jewish claim to this land goes back 2,000 years
earlier, to biblical times. Jews have lived continually in the land of Israel
since the destruction of the Jewish state by Rome in 70 C.E. In 1500, for example, an
estimated 10,000 Jews lived in the Safed region, and in the mid-1800’s, Jews
constituted the largest ethnic group in Jerusalem.
Many Palestinians, on the other hand, cannot trace their local lineage back
very far. Two examples: the large and influential al-Masri clan in Nablus arrived from Egypt
in recent centuries, and the 10,000 members of the Arab al-Turkman clan, in the
Jenin area, migrated from Turkey
in the 19th century. During the period of the British Mandate, (1920-1948),
large number of Arabs from Lebanon
and Syria settled in Palestine to take
advantage of the relative prosperity that resulted from Jewish
immigration". [4]. "Palestinian scholars and politicians have argued
that Palestinians are descendents of the Jebusites and other Biblical peoples
who predated the Israelite conquest of Canaan
in the 13th century B.C.E. This line of argument contradicts the insistence of
Palestinian Muslims that they are descendents of the Arabs who swept across the
Middle East and North Africa at the time of Mohammed, conquering Palestine from the
Christian Byzantines in 637 C.E." [4].
Book recommended by a Reform Rabbi
Arab and Jew, Wounded Spirits in a Promised Land, David Shipler, 1986, 2002
[2]. http://www.eretzyisroel.org/ Palestine, a land virtually laid waste with
little Population.
[3]. The Innocents Abroad, Mark Twain
[4]. What Everyone Should Know About the Conflict, Reform Judaism, Fall 2002,
pg. 38
The Land of Palestine - 5000 years of History [primary source: An Atlas of
Palestine]
Two handouts….text and maps
We will review a brief 5000 year history of Palestine including the use of the
maps
We will review recent history of Palestine, since the founding of the State of
Israel
We will discuss the PLO (Palestinian Liberation Organization)
We will discuss Jewish settlements
We will discuss the "Palestinians"…specifically the Arab Palestinians
Circa for BC dates
Ussher Beecher Hastings Jewish Cyclopedia 1st year of Rehoboam 975 BC 982 BC
939 BC 978 BC
The Maps
Please label each map from front to back, 1,2,3, etc.
2. When looking at a map, for orientation, always look to see where the two
seas are.
----Ron Masek
