THE HISTORY OF PALESTINE

Thousands of years before the Romans invented "Palastina" the land
had been known as "Canaan". The Canaanites had many tiny city-states,
each one at times independent and at times a vassal of an Egyptian or
Hittite king. The Canaanites never united into a state.

After the Exodus from Egypt probably in the Thirteenth Century BCE
but perhaps earlier -- , the Children of Israel settled in the land
of Canaan. There they formed first a tribal confederation, and then
the biblical kingdoms of Israel and Judah, and the post-biblical
kingdom of Judea. From the beginning of history to this day, Israel-
Judah-Judea has the only united, independent, sovereign nation-state
that ever existed in "Palestine" west of the Jordan River. (In
biblical times, Ammon, Moab and Edom as well as Israel had land east
of the Jordan, but they disappeared in antiquity and no other nation
took their place until the British invented Trans-Jordan in the
1920s.)

After the Roman conquest of Judea, "Palastina" became a province of
the pagan Roman Empire and then of the Christian Byzantine Empire,
and very briefly of the Zoroastrian Persian Empire. In 638 CE, an
Arab-Muslim Caliph took Palastina away from the Byzantine Empire and
made it part of an Arab-Muslim Empire. The Arabs, who had no name of
their own for this region, adopted the Greco-Roman name Palastina,
that they pronounced "Falastin".

In that period, much of the mixed population of Palastina converted
to Islam and adopted the Arabic language. They were subjects of a
distant Caliph who ruled them from his capital, that was first in
Damascus and later in Baghdad. They did not become a nation or an
independent state, or develop a distinct society or culture.

In 1099, Christian Crusaders from Europe conquered Palestina-
Falastin. After 1099, it was never again under Arab rule. The
Christian Crusader kingdom was politically independent, but never
developed a national identity. It remained a military outpost of
Christian Europe, and lasted less than 100 years. Thereafter,
Palestine was joined to Syria as a subject province first of the
Mameluks, ethnically mixed slave-warriors whose center was in Egypt,
and then of the Ottoman Turks, whose capital was in Istanbul.

During the First World War, the British took Palestine from the
Ottoman Turks. At the end of the war, the Ottoman Empire collapsed
and among its subject provinces "Palestine" was assigned to the
British, to govern temporarily as a mandate from the League of
Nations.

THE JEWISH NATIONAL HOME

Travellers to Palestine from the Western world left records of what
they saw there. The theme throughout their reports is dismal: The
land was empty, neglected, abandoned, desolate, fallen into ruins.
Nothing there [Jerusalem] to be seen but a little of the old walls
which is yet remaining and all the rest is grass, moss and weeds. --
English pilgrim in 1590 The country is in a considerable degree empty
of inhabitants and therefore its greatest need is of a body of
population" -- British consul in 1857 There is not a solitary village
throughout its whole extent [valley of Jezreel] -- not for 30 miles
in either direction. ... One may ride 10 miles hereabouts and not see
10 human beings. For the sort of solitude to make one dreary, come to
Galilee... Nazareth is forlorn... Jericho lies a moldering ruin...
Bethlehem and Bethany, in their poverty and humiliation... untenanted
by any living creature... A desolate country whose soil is rich
enough, but is given over wholly to weeds... a silent, mournful
expanse... a desolation... We never saw a human being on the whole
route... Hardly a tree or shrub anywhere. Even the olive tree and the
cactus, those fast friends of a worthless soil, had almost deserted
the country... Palestine sits in sackcloth and ashes... desolate and
unlovely... -- Mark Twain, The Innocents Abroad, 1867

The restoration of the "desolate and unlovely" land began in the
latter half of the Nineteenth Century with the first Jewish pioneers.
Their labors created newer and better conditions and opportunities,
which in turn attracted migrants from many parts of the Middle East,
both Arabs and others. The Balfour Declaration of 1917, confirmed by
the League of Nations Mandate, commited the British Government to the
principle that "His Majesty's government view with favour the
establishment in Palestine of a Jewish National Home, and will use
their best endeavors to facilitate the achievement of this
object... " It was specified both that this area be open to "close
Jewish settlement" and that the rights of all inhabitants already in
the country be preserved and protected.

Mandate Palestine originally included all of what is now Jordan, as
well as all of what is now Israel, and the territories between them.
However, when Great Britain's protégé Emir Abdullah was forced to
leave the ancestral Hashemite domain in Arabia, the British created a
realm for him that included all of Manfate Palestine east of the
Jordan River. There was no traditional or historic Arab name for this
land, so it was called after the river: first Trans-Jordan and later
Jordan.

By this political act, that violated the conditions of the Balfour
Declaration and the Mandate, the British cut more than 75 percent out
of the Jewish National Home. No Jew has ever been permitted to reside
in Trans-Jordan/Jordan.

Less than 25 percent then remained of Mandate Palestine, and even in
this remnant, the British violated the Balfour and Mandate
requirements for a "Jewish National Home" and for "close Jewish
settlement". They progressively restricted where Jews could buy land,
where they could live, build, farm or work.

After the Six-Day War in 1967, Israel was finally able to settle some
small part of those lands from which the Jews had been debarred by
the British. Successive British governments regularly condemn their
settlement as "illegal". In truth, it was the British who had acted
illegally in banning Jews from these parts of the Jewish National
Home.

WHO IS A PALESTINIAN?

During the period of the Mandate, it was the Jewish population that
was known as "Palestinians" including those who served in the British
Army in World War II.

British policy was to curtail their numbers and progressively limit
Jewish immigration. By 1939, the White Paper virtually put an end to
admission of Jews to Palestine. This policy was imposed the most
stringently at the very time this Home was most desperately needed --
after the rise of Nazi power in Europe. Jews who might have developed
the empty lands of Palestine and left progeny there, instead died in
the gas chambers of Europe or in the seas they were trying to cross
to the Promised Land.

At the same time that the British slammed the gates on Jews, they
permitted or ignored massive illegal immigration into Western
Palestine from Arab countries Jordan, Syria, Egypt, North Africa. In
1939, Winston Churchill noted that "So far from being persecuted, the
Arabs have crowded into the country and multiplied . . . ." Exact
population statistics may be problematic, but it seems that by 1947
the number of Arabs west of the Jordan River was approximately triple
of what it had been in 1900.

The current myth is that these Arabs were long established in
Palestine, until the Jews came and "displaced" them. The fact is,
that recent Arab immigration into Palestine "displaced" the Jews.
That the massive increase in Arab population was very recent is
attested by the ruling of the United Nations: That any Arab who had
lived in Palestine for two years and then left in 1948 qualifies as
a "Palestinian refugees".

Casual use of population statistics for Jews and Arabs in Palestine
rarely consider how the proportions came to be. One factor was the
British policy of keeping out Jews while bringing in Arabs. Another
factor was the violence used to kill or drive out Jews even where
they had been long established. For one example: The Jewish
connection with Hebron goes back to Abraham, and there has been an
Israelite/Jewish community there since Joshua long before it was King
David's first capital. In 1929, Arab rioters with the passive consent
of the British -- killed or drove out virtually the entire Jewish
community.

For another example: In 1948, Trans-Jordan seized much of Judea and
Samaria (which they called The West Bank) and East Jerusalem and the
Old City. They killed or drove out every Jew.

It is now often proposed as a principle of international law and
morality that all places that the British and the Arabs rendered
Judenrein must forever remain so. In contrast, Israel eventually
allotted 17 percent of Mandate Palestine has a large and growing
population of Arab citizens.

FROM PALESTINE TO ISRAEL

What was to become of "Palestine" after the Mandate? This question
was taken up by various British and international commissions and
other bodies, culminating with the United Nations in 1947. During the
various deliberations, Arab officials, spokesmen and writers
expressed their views on "Palestine".

"There is no such country as Palestine. 'Palestine' is a term the
Zionists invented. . . . Our country was for centuries part of
Syria. 'Palestine' is alien to us. It is the Zionists who introduced
it." -- Local Arab leader to British Peel Commission, 1937

"There is no such thing as Palestine in history, absolutely not" --
Professor Philip Hitti, Arab historian to Anglo-American Committee of
Inquiry, 1946 "It is common knowledge that Palestine is nothing but
southern Syria." -- Ahmed Shukairy, United Nations Security Council,
1956

By 1948, the Arabs had still not yet discovered their ancient nation
of Falastin. When they were offered half of Palestine west of the
Jordan River for a state, the offer was violently rejected. Six Arab
states launched a war of annihilation against the nascent State of
Israel. Their purpose was not to establish an independent Falastin.
Their aim was to partition western Palestine amongst themselves.

They did not succeed in killing Israel, but Trans-Jordan succeeded in
taking Judea and Samaria (West Bank) and East Jerusalem, killing or
driving out all the Jews who had lived in those places, and banning
Jews of all nations from Jewish holy places. Egypt succeeded in
taking the Gaza Strip. These two Arab states held these lands until
1967. Then they launched another war of annihilation against Israel,
and in consequence lost the lands they had taken by war in 1948.

During those 19 years, 1948-1967, Jordan and Egypt never offered to
surrendar those lands to make up an independent state of Falastin.
The "Palestinians" never sought it. Nobody in the world ever
suggested it, much less demanded it. Finally, in 1964, the Palestine
Liberation Movement was founded. Ahmed Shukairy, who less than 10
years earlier had denied the existence of Palestine, was its first
chairman. Its charter proclaimed its sole purpose to be the
destruction of Israel. To that end it helped to precipitate the Arab
attack on Israel in 1967.

The outcome of that attack then inspired an alteration in public
rhetoric. As propaganda, it sounds better to speak of the liberation
of Falastin than of the destruction of Israel. Much of the world,
governments and media and public opinion, accept virtually without
question of serious analysis the new-sprung myth of an Arab nation of
Falastin, whose territory is unlawfully occupied by the Jews.

Since the end of World War I, the Arabs of the Middle East and North
Africa have been given independent states in 99.5 percent of the land
they claimed. Lord Balfour once expressed his hope that when the
Arabs had been given so much, they would "not begrudge" the Jews
the "little notch" promised to them.