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Boundaries and name Ancient Egyptian texts call the entire levantine coastal area R-t-n-u (conventionally Retenu), which stretched along the Mediterranean coast in between modern Egypt and Turkey. It subdivided into three regions. Retenu's southern region (called Djahy) approximates modern Israel with the Palestinian Territories, the central region Lebanon, and the northern region (called Amurru) the Syrian coast as far north as the Orontes River near Turkey. During the Israelite Period (or Iron Age), the Kingdom of Israel of the United Monarchy reigned from Jerusalem over an area approximating modern Israel with the Palestinian Territories but extending farther westward and northward to cover much (but not all) of the greater Land of Israel. After the split, the southern part became the Kingdom of Judah, and the northern part the Kingdom of Israel. The term "Palestine" derives from the word Philistine, the name of a non-Semitic ethnic group, who inhabited a smaller area on the southern coast, called Philistia, whose borders approximate the modern Gaza Strip. Philistia encompassed the five cities of Gaza, Ashkelon, Ashdod, Ekron, and Gath. The Egyptian texts of the temple at Medinet Habu, record a people called the P-r-s-t (conventionally Peleset), one of the Sea Peoples who invaded Egypt in Ramesses III's reign. This is considered very likely to be a reference to the Philistines. The Hebrew name Peleshet ( Pəléshseth), usually translated as Philistia in English, is used in the Bible to denote their southern coastal region. The Assyrian emperor Sargon II called it the Palashtu in his Annals. The Philistines seem to have disappeared as a distinct ethnic group by the Assyrian period, however the name of their land remained. During the Persian Period, the Greek form was first used in the 5th century BCE by Herodotus who wrote of a "district of Syria, called Palaistinêi" (whence , whence ). The boundaries of the area he referred to were not explicitly stated, but Josephus used the name only for the smaller coastal area, Philistia. Ptolemy also used the term. In Latin, Pliny mentions a region of Syria that was "formerly called Palaestina" among the areas of the Eastern Mediterranean. During the Roman Period, the Province of Judea (including Samaria) covered most of Israel and the Palestinian territories. But following the Bar Kokhba rebellion, the Romans redrew these borders into the new Provinces of Syria Palestine () (including Judea) and Samaria. During the Byzantine Period, this entire region (including Syria Palestine, Samaria, and Galilee) was renamed Palaestina and then subdivided into Diocese I and II. The Byzantines also renamed an area of land including the Negev, Sinai, and the west coast of the Arabian Peninsula as Palaestina Salutoris, sometimes called Palaestina III. Since the Byzantine Period, the Byzantine borders of Palaestina (I and II) have served as a name for the geographic area between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea. Holy Texts The Hebrew Bible calls the region Canaan () when referring to the pre-Israelite period and thereafter Israel (Yisrael). The name "Land of the Hebrews" (, Eretz Ha-Ivrim) is also found as well as several poetical names: "land flowing with milk and honey", "land that God swore to your fathers to assign to you", "Holy Land", "Land of the Lord", and the "Promised Land". The Land of Canaan is given a precise description in (), and included all of Lebanon (). The wide area appears to be the habitat of the ancient ethnic Hebrews, albeit shared with other ethnic groups. It is even said to extend as far as the Euphrates River including an area called Aram Naharaim, which includes Haran in modern Turkey, from where Abraham the ancestor of the Israelites departed. The events of the Four Gospels of the Christian Bible take place entirely in Palestine. In the Qur'an, the term ("Holy Land", Al-Ard Al-Muqaddasah) is mentioned at least seven times, once when Moses proclaims to the Children of Israel: "O my people! Enter the holy land which Allah hath assigned unto you, and turn not back ignominiously, for then will ye be overthrown, to your own ruin." (Surah 5:21) History
Roman period As a result of the First Jewish-Roman War (66-73), Titus sacked Jerusalem and destroyed the Second Temple, leaving only the Western Wall. In 135, following the fall of a Jewish revolt led by Bar Kokhba in 132–135, the Roman emperor Hadrian expelled most Jews from Judea, leaving large Jewish populations in Samaria and the Galilee. He also changed the name of the Roman province of Judea (Israel) to Syria Palaestina named after the Philistines as an insult to the now conquered Jews. In what was considered a form of psychological warfare, the Romans also tried to change the name of Jerusalem to Aelia Capitolina, but that had less staying power. Over time the name Syria Palaestina was shortened to Palaestina, which by then had become an administrative political unit within the Roman Empire. Byzantine (Eastern Roman Empire) period In approximately 390, Palaestina was further organised into three units: Palaestina Prima, Secunda, and Tertia (First, Second, and Third Palestine). Palaestina Prima consisted of Judea, Samaria, the coast, and Peraea with the governor residing in Caesarea. Palaestina Secunda consisted of the Galilee, the lower Jezreel Valley, the regions east of Galilee, and the western part of the former Decapolis with the seat of government at Scythopolis. Palaestina Tertia included the Negev, southern Jordan — once part of Arabia — and most of Sinai with Petra the usual residence of the governor. Palestina Tertia was also known as Palaestina Salutaris. This reorganization reduced Arabia to the northern Jordan east of Peraea. Byzantine administration of Palestine ended temporarily during the Persian occupation of 614–28, then permanently after the rise of Islam in the Arabian Peninsula and the Islamic armies conquering the region beginning in 635. The Caliphate period The muslim rulers divided the province of ash-Sham (Arabic for Greater Syria) into five districts. Jund Filastin (Arabic جند فلسطين, literally "the army or military district of Palestine") was a region extending from the Sinai to south of the plain of Acre. At times it reached down into the Sinai. Major towns included Rafah, Caesarea, Gaza, Jaffa, Nablus, Jericho, Ramla and Jerusalem. Initially Ludd (Lydda) was the capital, but in 717 it was moved to the new city of ar-Ramlah (Ramla). (The capital was not moved to Jerusalem until much later, when the organization into Junds was already breaking down.) Jund al-Urdunn (literally "Jordan") was a region to the north and east of Filastin. Major towns included Tiberias, Legio, Acre, Beisan and Tyre. The capital was at Tiberias. Various political upheavals led to readjustments of the boundaries several times. After the 10th century, the division into Junds began to break down and the Turkish invasions of the 1070s, followed by the first Crusade, completed that process. See also the Mideastweb map of "Palestine Under the Caliphs", showing Jund boundaries (external link). Crusader period See the articles on the Crusades and the Kingdom of Jerusalem. Mamluk period After Muslim control over Palestine was reestablished in the 12th and 13th centuries, the division into districts was reinstated, with boundaries that were frequently redrawn. 1263/Jul 1291 the country was part of the Mamluk Sultanate of Egypt. Around the end of the 13th century, Palestine comprised several of nine emirates of Syria, namely the "Kingdoms" of Gaza (including Ascalon and Hebron), Karak (including Jaffa and Legio), Safad (including Safad, Acre, Sidon and Tyre) and parts of the Kingdom of Damascus (sometimes extending as far south as Jerusalem). By the middle of the 14th century, Syria had again been divided into five districts, of which Filastin included Jerusalem (its capital), Ramla, Ascalon, Hebron and Nablus, while Hauran included Tiberias (its capital). Ottoman period After the Ottoman conquest, the name disappeared as the official name of an administrative unit, as the Turks often called their (sub)provinces after the capital. Since its 1516 incorporation in the Ottoman Empire, it was part of the vilayet (province) of Damascus-Syria until 1660, next of the vilayet of Saida (seat in Lebanon), shortly interrupted by the 7 March 1799 - July 1799 French occupation of Jaffa, Haifa, and Caesarea. On 10 May 1832 it was one of the Turkish provinces annexed by Muhammad Ali's shortly imperialistic Egypt (nominally still Ottoman), but in November 1840 direct Ottoman rule was restored. Still the old name remained in popular and semi-official use. Many examples of its usage in the 16th and 17th centuries have survived. During the 19th century, the "Ottoman Government employed the term Arz-i Filistin (the 'Land of Palestine') in official correspondence, meaning for all intents and purposes the area to the west of the River Jordan which became 'Palestine' under the British in 1922". Amongst the educated Arab public, Filastin was a common concept, referring either to the whole of Palestine or to the Jerusalem sanjaq alone or just to the area around Ramle. The Ottoman Sultan discouraged all large-scale immigration to Palestine, replying to a request by Rabbi Joseph Nantonek for permission to settle Jews in 1876 that "almost all lands in Palestine were occupied, and that the autonomy sought by Nantonek was incompatible with the administrative principles of the state" and decrees against mass settlement were issued by the Ottoman government in 1884, 1887 and 1888. Significant numbers of Jews began making Aliyah to the Holy Land in 1882 to build collective farms and eventually established the suburb of Tel Aviv in 1909, which became a city in 1921. After counting only 7.000 in 1700 the total number of Jews in Palestine had grown by 1900 to about 60,000 (out of a total population of 500,000), which shows in Karpat's view that "the Ottoman policy of allowing individuals to immigrate and to settle, but prohibiting large groups from doing the same, was successful". Ottoman rule over the region lasted until the Great War (World War I) when the Ottomans sided with Germany and the Central Powers. During World War I, the Ottomans were driven from much of the area by the United Kingdom during the dissolution of the Ottoman Empire. As the Empire ended, the number of Jews in Palestine had declined to 55,000. The 19th and 20th centuries In European usage up to World War I, "Palestine" was used informally for a region that extended in the north-south direction typically from Raphia (south-east of Gaza) to the Litani River (now in Lebanon). The western boundary was the sea, and the eastern boundary was the poorly-defined place where the Syrian desert began. In various European sources, the eastern boundary was placed anywhere from the Jordan River to slightly east of Amman. The Negev Desert was not included. Under the Sykes-Picot Agreement of 1916, it was envisioned that most of Palestine, when freed from Ottoman control, would become an international zone not under direct French or British colonial control. Shortly thereafter, British foreign minister Arthur Balfour issued the Balfour Declaration of 1917, which laid plans for a Jewish homeland to be established in Palestine eventually. The British-led Egyptian Expeditionary Force, commanded by Edmund Allenby, captured Jerusalem on 9 December, 1917 and occupied the whole of the Levant following the defeat of Turkish forces in Palestine at the Battle of Megiddo in September 1918. British Mandate (1920-1948)
UN Partition
Current status Following the 1948 Arab-Israeli War, the 1949 Armistice Agreements between Israel and neighboring Arab states eliminated Palestine as a distinct territory. It was divided between Israel, Egypt, Syria and Jordan. In addition to the UN-partitioned area, Israel captured 26% of the Mandate territory west of the Jordan river. Jordan captured and annexed about 21% of the Mandate territory. Jerusalem was divided, with Jordan taking the eastern parts, including the old city, and Israel taking the western parts. The Gaza Strip was captured by Egypt. For a description of the massive population movements, Arab and Jewish, at the time of the 1948 war and over the following decades, see Palestinian exodus and Jewish exodus from Arab lands. From the 1960s onward, the term "Palestine" was regularly used in political contexts. Various declarations, such as the 1988 proclamation of a State of Palestine by the PLO referred to a country called Palestine, defining its borders with differing degrees of clarity, including the annexation of the whole of the State of Israel. Most recently, the Palestine draft constitution refers to borders based on the West Bank and Gaza Strip prior to the 1967 Six-Day War. This so-called Green Line follows the 1949 armistice line; the permanent borders are yet to be negotiated. Furthermore, since 1994, there has been a Palestinian Authority controlling varying portions of historic Palestine. The Origins and Evolution of the Palestine Problem:1917-1988 The question of Palestine was brought before the United Nations shortly after the end of the Second World War. The origins of the Palestine problem as an international issue, however, lie in events occurring towards the end of the First World War. These events led to a League of Nations decision to place Palestine under the administration of Great Britain as the Mandatory Power under the Mandates System adopted by the League. In principle, the Mandate was meant to be in the nature of a transitory phase until Palestine attained the status of a fully independent nation, a status provisionally recognized in the League's Covenant, but in fact the Mandate's historical evolution did not result in the emergence of Palestine as an independent nation. The decision on the Mandate did not take into account the wishes of the people of Palestine, both Arabs and Jews, despite the Covenant's requirements that "the wishes of these communities must be a principal consideration in the selection of the Mandatory". This assumed special significance because, almost five years before receiving the mandate from the League of Nations, the British Government had given commitments to the Zionist Organization regarding the establishment of a Jewish national home in Palestine, for which Zionist leaders had pressed a claim of historical connection since their ancestors had lived in Palestine two thousand years earlier before dispersing in the Diaspora. During the period of the Mandate, the Zionist Organization worked to secure the establishment of a Jewish national home in Palestine, where both Jews and Arabs could live side by side. The Arab people of Palestine felt this design to be a violation of their rights. They also viewed it as an infringement of assurances of independence given by the Allied Powers to Arab leaders in return for their support during the war. The result was mounting resistance to the Mandate by all Arabs, followed by Arab violence against the Jewish population. Early demographics Estimating the population of Palestine in antiquity relies on 3 methods - censuses and writings made at the times, biblical associations, and the scientific method based on excavations and statistical methods that consider the number of settlements at the particular age, area of each settlement, density factor for each settelment. According to Joseph Jacobs, writing in the Jewish Encyclopedia (1901-1906) *, the Pentateuch contains a number of statements as to the number of Jews that left Egypt, the descendants of the seventy sons and grandsons of Jacob who took up their residence in that country. Altogether, including Levites, there were 611,730 males over twenty years of age, and therefore capable of bearing arms; this would imply a population of about 3,154,000. The Census of David is said to have recorded 1,300,000 males over twenty years of age, which would imply a population of over 5,000,000. The number of exiles who returned from Babylon is given at 42,360. Tacitus declares that Jerusalem at its fall contained 600,000 persons; Josephus, that there were as many as 1,100,000. According to excavational studies by Magen Borshi of The Israel Museum in Jerusalem:
Similarly, a study by Yigal Shiloh of The Hebrew University suggests that the population of Palestine in the Iron Age could have never exceeded a million. He writes:
Shmuel Katz writes:
Demographics in the late Ottoman and British Mandate periods By Volney's estimates in 1785, there were no more than 200,000 people in the country. According to Justin McCarthy, the population of Palestine in the early 19th century was 350,000 and in 1900 Palestine (according to Ottoman statistics) had a population of about 600,000 of which 94% were Arabs. In 1914 Palestine had a population of 657,000 Muslim Arabs, 81,000 Christian Arabs, and 59,000 Jews. Alphonse de Lamartine in 1835:
Mark Twain visited Palestine in 1867 and wrote in Innocents Abroad "what he saw as he travelled the length of the Desolate country":
So overwhelming was Twain's impression of an irreversible desolation that he came to the grim conclusion that Palestine would never come to life again. Kathleen Christison was critical of Twain and said that in Nablus the city had a population of 20,000 Arabs and a few hundred Samaritans yet Twain described the Samaritans at length without mentioning the Arabs at all. In the middle of the nineteenth century, one estimate of the population for the whole of Palestine was between 50,000 and 100,000 people. In a census in the late 19th century, the population of Palestine was over 230,000. Kemal Karpat claims that at this time it was one of the more populated regions of the Ottoman empire. After a visit to Palestine in 1891, Ahad Ha'am wrote:
By 1948, the population had risen to 1,900,000, of whom 68% were Arabs, and 32% were Jews (UNSCOP report, including bedouin). Genetic analyses of the populations of the region According to various genetic studies, Jewish populations and Palestinian populations do overlap genetically. Palestinian Muslims additionally have genetic components that are found in the population of the Arabian Peninsula, but are rare in Jews. Ashkenazi Jews also carry components found in European populations, but are rare in Arabs. Geneticists generally agree there was mixing in Middle East populations in prehistoric times. Nebel et al. (2000) doing Y-chromosome haplotype analysis for patrilineal ancestry of Jews and Palestinian Muslims "revealed a common gene pool for a large portion of Y chromosomes, suggesting a relatively recent common ancestry". The two modal haplotypes that comprise the Palestinian Arab clade were very infrequent among Jews, "reflecting divergence and/or admixture from other populations". Nebel et al. regard their findings in good agreement with historical evidence that suggest that "Part, or perhaps the majority, of the Muslim Arabs in this country descended from local inhabitants, mainly Christians and Jews, who had converted after the Islamic conquest in the seventh century AD... These local inhabitants, in turn, were descendants of the core population that had lived in the area for several centuries, some even since prehistoric times. A subsequent study aimed at determining the genetic relationship among three Jewish communities (Ashkenazi, Sephardic, and Kurdish) by the same group described two Y-chromosomal haplotype groups, Eu9 and Eu10, that represent a major part of Middle East ancestry. Eu9 appears to originate from the northern Fertile Crescent, while Eu10 appears to come from the southern part of it. Jewish and Muslim Kurdish populations have high-frequency of Eu9 but generally lack Eu10, which is prevalent in Palestinian Muslims. The study proposes that ...the Y chromosomes in Palestinian Arabs and Bedouin represent, to a large extent, early lineages derived from the Neolithic inhabitants of the area and additional lineages from more-recent population movements. The early lineages are part of the common chromosome pool shared with Jews. According to our working model, the more-recent migrations were mostly from the Arabian Peninsula, as is seen in the Arab-specific Eu 10 chromosomes that include the modal haplotypes observed in Palestinians and Bedouin... The study demonstrates that the Y chromosome pool of Jews is an integral part of the genetic landscape of the region and, in particular, that Jews exhibit a high degree of genetic affinity to populations living in the north of the Fertile Crescent. In 1902, Sir James Frazer, in his book The Golden Bough, which argued his thesis about the origins of religion, speculated that the majority of Palestinian Arabs are descendants of the ancient Jebusites and Canaanites: "The Arabic-speaking peasants of Palestine are the progeny of the tribes which settled in the country before the Israelite invasion. They are still adhering to the land. They never left it and were never uprooted from it." Some geneticists agree with Frazer. Arnaiz-Villena, et al. (2001) compared the genetic profile of Palestinians with that of other Mediterranean populations, and argue that: * "Archaeologic and genetic data support the hypothesis that both Jews and Palestinians came from the ancient Canaanites, who extensively mixed with Egyptians, Mesopotamian and Anatolian peoples in ancient times." However, the study also says that Palestinians are closely related to Egyptians, Lebanese, Iranians, Cretans, Macedonians and Sardinians, Turks, Armenians and also to Algerians, Spaniards, French, Italians and Basques. It therefore doesn't answer the question of immigration. Arnaiz-Villena was later sacked from the journal's editorial board and the article retracted*. The journal claimed the article was politically biased and was written using inappropriate remarks about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The question of late Arab immigration to Palestine Whether there was significant Arab immigration into Palestine after the beginning of Jewish settlement there in the late 19th century has been a matter of some controversy. Demographer Uziel Schmelz, in his analysis of Ottoman registration data for 1905 populations of Jerusalem and Hebron kazas, found that most Ottoman citizens living in these areas, comprising about one quarter of the population of Palestine, were living at the place where they were born. Specifically, of Muslims, 93.1% were born in their current locality of residence, 5.2% were born elsewhere in Palestine, and 1.6% were born outside Palestine. Of Christians, 93.4% were born in their current locality, 3.0% were born elsewhere in Palestine, and 3.6% were born outside Palestine. Of Jews (excluding the large fraction who were not Ottoman citizens), 59.0% were born in their current locality, 1.9% were born elsewhere in Palestine, and 39.0% were born outside Palestine. Professor Joseph Kickasola of international affairs talks about the Palestine region being sparsely populated before the immigration. One of the reasons could have been the apparent lack of oil in the region. He also mentions the abundant existence of swamps and malaria. Historians note that the Zionist settlers drained the swamps and eradicated the deadly malaria. * American economist Gottheil considers that there was significant Arab immigration:
Yehoshua Porath believes that the notion of "large-scale immigration of Arabs from the neighboring countries" is a myth "proposed by Zionist writers". He writes:
Daniel Pipes responds to Porath by saying that the argument that "substantial immigration of Arabs to Palestine took place during the first half of the twentieth century is supported by an array of demographic statistics and contemporary accounts, the bulk of which have not been questioned by anyone, including Professor Porath." * Current demographics According to Israel's Central Bureau of Statistics, as of May 2006, of Israel's 7 million people, 77% were Jews, 18.5% Arabs, and 4.3% "others".• Among Jews, 68% were Sabras (Israeli-born), mostly second- or third-generation Israelis, and the rest are olim — 22% from Europe and the Americas, and 10% from Asia and Africa, including the Arab countries. • According to Palestinian evaluations, The West Bank is inhabited by approximately 2.4 million Palestinians. According to a study presented at The Sixth Herzliya Conference on The Balance of Israel’s National Security• there are 1.4 million Palestinians. According to Palestinian estimates, there are another 1.4 million Palestinians in the Gaza Strip. According to these Israeli and Palestinian estimates, the population in the region of Palestine stands at 9.8 - 10.8 millions. According to Jordanian statistics, there are almost 6 million inhabitants in Jordan, the majority of them being Palestinians but exact Palestinian percentage in the society is disputed and not encouraged to be researched by the government. Estimates are between 45 - 90 %. See also Maps Footnotes Bibliography | |||||||||||||||
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