JUST WHAT THE HELL IS "PALESTINE" ANYWAY?

JUST WHAT IS PALESTINE AND WHO CARES
Since as long as I can remember, Israel has been the center of conflict, front page news it seems daily. I was so numbed by the coverage I never really studied or grasped the historical perspectives of either side. I remember cancelling my Time subscription in the early 80's because there was never any other news but the Middle East. I would just shuffle through the magazine till some other topic would miraculously be covered. I finally decided it was time to do some research into what all the fuss is all about. I hope this very condensed history sheds some light on the subject for all my readers. You'll learn where the word palestine came from and the problem with current borders and why they fight. (clue: politics)

OVERVIEW
The Israeli-Palestinian conflict, which is at the heart of the Arab-Israeli conflict, is an ongoing dispute between two peoples, Israelis and Palestinians, over the land of Israel/Palestine. The conflict started in the late 19th century as Zionists from Europe began to settle in the land, then controlled by the Ottoman Empire, and expressed their desire to create a state for the Jewish people. This settlement went against the wishes of the majority of the population, who were Muslim and Christian Arabs.

Though there has been much violence, controversy, and negotiation between both sides, which took place throughout the 20th century and continues to this day, the central, contentious issue of who controls the land remains the same. Both Israelis and Palestinians make nationalistic claims to this piece of land based on history, ethnicity, religion, and culture. Israelis, as represented by the State of Israel, have sovereignty over most of the land, which they established by defeating surrounding Arab armies in two major wars: the 1948 Arab-Israeli War and the 1967 Six Day War. Palestinians, as represented by the Palestinian Liberation Organization and the Palestinian Authority, seek control over part or all of the land. Palestinians want to establish an independent, viable, and sovereign state of their own on this land.

So who's land is it? Who's right, who's wrong? A historical review is in order...

BIBLICAL PERIOD
During the ancient bible period, this region was referred to as Canaan and was the home of several small nations. Most of this region was conquered by the Hebrews who settled in the region and divided it among the 12 Israelite tribes, who later were merged into one united Kingdom of Israel. After 3 generations of kings, the kingdom was split in to 2 sister kingdoms: the northern Israel, and the southern Judah. After a few centuries the Assyrians destroyed the north and exiled its inhabitants (the Lost Tribes) in 721 BC, the Babylonians the southern (and the first Temple) and exiled its inhabitants (Jews) in 586 BC. After 50 years the Jewish exiles were allowed by the Persian Empire to return back to the Land of Israel, where they built the Second Temple and allowed autonomous rule.

GREEK PERIOD
The Persian Empire soon fell under the Greek forces of Alexander the Great. After his death, with the absence of heirs, his conquests were divided amongst his generals, while the region of the Jews (Judah) was first part of the Ptolemaic dynasty and then part of the Seleucid Empire. The Jewish population was allowed a limited autonomy in religion and administration and Jerusalem became a spiritual center for the Jews. But soon the Hellenistic influence caused tensions between the Greek leaders and Jews. This led to the open revolt of the Jews and the construction of their kingdom. After approximately a century of independence, the kingdom fell to the Roman Empire under Pompey and became first a client kingdom and then a Province.

ROMAN TIMES
As a result of the First Jewish-Roman War (66-73), Titus sacked Jerusalem destroying the Second Temple, leaving only supporting walls, including the Western Wall. In 135, following the fall of a Jewish revolt, emperor Hadrian expelled most Jews from Judea on the pain of death. The Roman name Syria Palaestina was shortened to Palaestina.

BYZANTINE (Eastern Roman Empire) PERIOD
In 390, Palaestina was further organised into three units: Palaestina Prima, Secunda, and Tertia (First, Second, and Third Palestine). This reorganization reduced Arabia to the northern Jordan east of Peraea. In 536 Justinian I promoted the governor giving him authority over all three consulars. Justinian believed that the elevation of the governor was appropriate because he was responsible for "the province in which our Lord Jesus Christ... appeared on earth". This was also the principal factor explaining why Palestine prospered under the Christian Empire. The cities of Palestine reached their peak population in the late Roman period and produced notable Christian scholars. Byzantine rule ended temporarily during the Persian occupation of 614–28, then permanently after the Muslims arrived in 634. Jerusalem capitulated in 638.

THE ARAB CALIPHATE PERIOD
The muslim rulers divided the province into five districts. Various political upheavals led to readjustments of the boundaries several times. After the 10th century, the division began to break down and the Turkish invasions of the 1070s, followed by the first Crusade, completed that process.

FIRST CRUSADE 1095–1099
In March of 1095 Pope Urban II called upon all Christians to join a war against the Turks, promising those who died in the endeavor immediate remission of their sins. Crusader armies managed to defeat two substantial Turkish forces at Dorylaeum and at Antioch, finally marching to Jerusalem with only a fraction of their original forces. In 1099, they took Jerusalem by assault and massacred the population. As a result of the First Crusade, several small Crusader states were created, notably 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. 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. By the middle of the 14th century, Syria had again been divided into five districts, of which Filastin included Jerusalem (its capital).

OTTOMMAN PERIOD
After the Ottoman conquest, the name "Palestine" disappeared as the official name, as the Turks often called their (sub)provinces after the capital. Since its 1516 incorporation in the Ottoman Empire, it was part of Damascus-Syria until 1660, shortly interrupted by the March-July 1799 French occupation. 1832 it was one of the Turkish provinces annexed by Muhammad Ali's shortly imperialistic Egypt, but in November 1840 direct Ottoman rule was restored. The old name remained popular and semi-official. During the 19th century, the Ottomans employed the term Arz-i Filistin (the 'Land of Palestine'), 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 alone or just to the area around Ramle. Ottoman rule lasted until World War I when the Ottomans sided with Germany. The Ottomans were driven out of the area by the United Kingdom. The number of Jews in Palestine had declined to 55,000.

THE 19th & 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 south-east Gaza to Lebanon. The western boundary was the sea, and the eastern boundary was the poorly-defined place where the Syrian desert began.

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 control. The British captured Jerusalem in December 1917 and occupied the whole of the Levant following the defeat of Turkish forces. 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.

In April 1920 the Allied Supreme Council (the USA, Great Britain, France, Italy and Japan) met at Sanremo and formal decisions were taken on the allocation of mandate territories. The United Kingdom accepted a mandate for Palestine, but the boundaries of the mandate and the conditions under which it was to be held were not decided.

In July 1920, the French drove Faisal bin Husayn from Damascus where local chiefs traditionally resisted any central authority. The sheikhs, who had earlier pledged their loyalty to the Sharif, asked the British to undertake the region's administration. Herbert Samuel asked for the extension of the Palestine government's authority to Transjordan. In the summer of 1921 Transjordan was included within the Mandate, but excluded provisions for a Jewish National Home. On 24 July, 1922 the League of Nations approved the terms of the British Mandate over Palestine and Transjordan. On 16 September the League formally approved a memorandum from Lord Balfour confirming the exemption of Transjordan from the clauses of the mandate concerning the creation of a Jewish national home and from the mandate's responsibility to facilitate Jewish immigration and land settlement. In reality, the British prevented Jews from settling in Transjordan, while Arabs could freely settle in Palestine. Transjordan was essentially 77% of Palestine so this was viewed as a great injustice and huge division of the territory designated for the Jewish National Home by the Balfour Declaration according to Jewish leaders.

The American protested against the issuance of mandates and with quarrels between the Italians, French, and British explain why the mandates did not come into force until nearly four years after the signing of the Peace Treaty. Even before the Mandate came into legal effect in 1923, British terminology sometimes used '"Palestine" for the part west of the Jordan River and "Trans-Jordan" for the part east of the Jordan River. However, "Palestine" in the sense of the Jewish National Home often included lands on both sides of the Jordan River.

The situation in Palestine itself rapidly deteriorated, due to the incessant attacks by the locals on British officials, armed forces, and strategic installations. This caused severe damage to British morale and prestige, as well as increasing opposition to the mandate in Britain itself, public opinion demanding to "bring the boys home". World public opinion turned against Britain as a result of the British policy of preventing the Jewish Holocaust survivors from reaching Palestine, sending them instead to refugee camps in Cyprus, or even back to Germany, as in the case of Exodus 1947. The costs of maintaining an army of over 100,000 men in Palestine weighed heavily on a British economy suffering from post-war depression, and was another cause for British public opinion to demand an end to the Mandate. Finally in early 1947 the British Government announced their desire to terminate the Mandate, and passed the responsibility over Palestine to the United Nations.

UN PARTITION
The UN Partitioned the State of Israel in November 1947. The UN passed the United Nations Partition Plan for Palestine, a plan to resolve the Arab-Jewish conflict by partitioning the territory into separate Jewish and Arab states, with the Greater Jerusalem area (encompassing Bethlehem) coming under international control. Jewish leaders accepted the plan, while Palestinian Arab leaders rejected it and refused to negotiate. Neighboring Arab and Muslim states also rejected the partition plan. The Arab community reacted violently, declared a strike and burned many buildings and shops.

STATE OF ISRAEL
As armed skirmishes between Arab and Jewish forces in Palestine continued, the British mandate ended on May 15, 1948, the establishment of the State of Israel having been proclaimed the day before. The neighboring Arab states and armies (Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, Egypt, Transjordan, Holy War Army, Arab Liberation Army, and local Arabs) immediately attacked Israel following its declaration of independence, and the 1948 Arab-Israeli War ensued. Consequently, the partition plan was never implemented.

Following the 1948 Arab-Israeli War, the 1949 Armistice Agreements between Israel and neighboring Arab states eliminated Palestine as a distinct territory. With the establishment of Israel, the remaining lands were divided amongst Egypt, Syria and Jordan. In addition to the UN-partitioned area it was allotted, Israel captured territory west of the Jordan river. Jordan captured and annexed the West Bank. 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.

From the 1960s onward, the term "Palestine" was regularly used in political contexts. Various declarations, such as the 15 November 1988 proclamation of a State of Palestine by the PLO referred to a country called Palestine, defining its borders based on the U.N. Resolution 242 and 383 and the principle of Land for Peace. The Green Line was the 1967 border established by many UN resolutions.

SUMMARY
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. 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. Zionist leaders had claimed a 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.

PERSONAL TAKE
It seems to me that both sides were played by the international community. No wonder the place is such a mess. But the Jews did agree to the UN decision of 1947 whereas the Palestinians rejected the offer. If they had swallowed their pride they would have had a independent state by now and possibly getting along in peace. We'll never know. And with the resurgence of religion fervor in both the west and east I don't see it ending anytime soon.