Palestine before Israel

Paratroopers at the Western Wall, 6-Day War, 1967 - SMP

I wrote a comment in which I said that “Israel created a state from nothing, while the Arabs created nothing from their countries,” which sparked controversy, but on a scale that did not exceed the limits of my friends.

Those who objected to what I wrote accused me of ignoring that Palestine has a history prior to the establishment of Israel, which stole an entire state and called it Israel.

A friend pointed out that what I wrote recalls the Zionist propaganda that the Israelis were a people without a land for a land without a people, which contradicts history, as the land of Palestine was inhabited by Arabs, Muslims, Christians, Druze, and Jews.

It is true that the land was inhabited by Arabs, but this does not mean that Zionism took over a state that existed before the Mandate.

Palestine - from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea - is a creation of European colonialism, according to the Sykes-Picot Agreement.

Map of the Sykes-Picot Agreement. britannica

Before the British established Palestine, there was no state with that name in history, and none of the Palestinian cities exercised any sovereignty.

Even Jerusalem, despite its religious status among Muslims, was never the capital of any Islamic empire, state, or emirate, unlike “Umayyad Damascus,” “Abbasid Baghdad,” and “Fatimid Cairo.” Throughout their history, the Palestinians had never ruled themselves. Rather, their regions were govern-orates belonging to governments distant from them, either in “Constantinople, before Islam,” or Damascus, Baghdad, and Cairo after Islam, then Constantinople after it became Istanbul, until the day of the demise of Ottoman rule and the establishment of the British Mandate in The year is 1920.

What we know about the Palestinians is that they are among the non-Semitic “Sea people & here” and that they invaded the eastern and southern coasts of the Mediterranean, but the Pharaohs of Egypt confronted them and prevented their settlement.

The Phoenicians in turn reached an agreement with them stipulating that the Philistines would not storm the Phoenician coast, which extended as far as Acre.

As for the Israelis - whose homes were in the Jordan Valley and they were not known for living in coastal areas or mastering the art of sailing - they did not prevent the Palestinians from settling the coast extending from Jaffa/Joppa to Al-Arish.

Bronze Age Mediterranean Invasions & Migrations Alexikoua (CC BY-SA)

At the beginning of the millennium AD, the Roman Empire organised its govern-orates/States/Provinces, giving the name “Palestina” to three southern eastern govern-orates, “Phoenicia” to 2 govern-orates, “Syria” to 2, and “Arabia” to the Nabataean regions in Jordan.
When the Arabs took control in the seventh century AD, they preserved some of the names of the Roman provinces and established the “Jund al-Filastin.”

Yet unlike Phenicia, whose people had their own language, religion, traditions, sovereignty over cities, and sometimes a maritime empire in the Mediterranean basin. Also, unlike the Nabataean Arabs, who spoke a late Nabataean language that linguists believe gave birth to Arabic, whose kingdom extended from the Hauran in the north to the vicinity of Yathrib in the south, It was not The Palestinians have a known state, language or gods.

In the time of the Romans, the inhabitants of Palestine were Romans, and in the time of the Arabs, they were Arabised.

This is not a disparagement of the Palestinians or their history. They Arabised and adopted the traditions of the East, adding to them and enriching them, but they did not exercise sovereignty, nor did they establish kingdoms, armies, or institutions, and the latter is the most important.

We do not know the reason that prompted the British to draw Palestine in its mandatory form.

We know the story of its northern border.

We know that the Jordan River was, in a sense, the border between the Nabataean kingdoms and Israel.

Rome had finished dissolving the Eastern kingdoms and turning them into provinces by the year 106 AD. Perhaps the form of Palestine was influenced by the British Balfour Declaration to establish a national homeland for the Jews, so the form of Mandate Palestine was somewhat similar to Israel before the Romans dissolved it.

During the Mandate and after it, the states based on the remains of the Ottoman states began to revive their ancient history: the Lebanese regained the history of the Emirates of Phoenicia, the Syrians regained Palmyra and Ugarit, and likewise did the Iraqis who founded their nationalism on the basis of Mesopotamian civilisation. Even the name Iraq is derived from Uruk, the oldest human city in southern Iraq that has disappeared today. Islamic literature mentions it as Uruk, today known as Warka.

The Ottoman Empire sided with Germany and Austria-Hungary in World War I and, as a result, in the period after the war, its territory in the Middle East was split up.

The Palestinians did not have a pre-Islamic history, so they tried to build their identity on Arab or Islamic nationalism, based on the importance of Jerusalem in the history of the Umayyads. Hostility towards Jewish immigrants also played a large role in forging a Palestinian national identity.

Did you know, that the map of #Palestine that you see every day on TV and social media is only 30% of the land of Palestine whose borders were drawn by the #British to separate it from #Iraq, #Syria, and the rest of the countries known today?

And, that #Balfour_Declaration… pic.twitter.com/9zGLZeQXvP

— Rami Zahra (@rami_zahra) October 16, 2023

However, the difference between the Arabs of Palestine and its Jewish immigrants was the abject Arab failure to build institutions that could fight the required confrontations and build a Palestinian state, compared to the amazing Jewish success in building Zionist institutions that preceded the establishment of Israel and led to it. A success that was evident in the victory of the Zionist army over the armies of five existing Arab governments.

In 1936, a new group was formed called The Arab Higher Committee. During the same period, the British sent Lord Peel to investigate the possibility of dividing the land, creating independent Jewish and Arab States. The Peel Commission met with the general secretary of the Arab Higher Committee, Awni Abd al-Hadi, who testified, “There is no such country as Palestine. ‘Palestine’ is a term the Zionists invented. There is no Palestine in the Bible. Our country was for centuries part of Syria. ‘Palestine’ is alien to us. It is the Zionists who introduced it.” Put simply, the representative for the Arab Higher Committee declared that the idea of a nation of Palestine was created by Zionist propaganda.

From 1918 to 1937, the Arab leaders told the British government that:

• Palestine did not exist as separate territory from Syria.
  
• Palestine had always been part of Syria.
  
• The local Arabs were willing to die to prevent the creation of Palestine.
  
• Palestine was created by Zionist propaganda.

Just let that sink in: At one point, the Arab leaders told the British government that Palestine was created by Zionist propaganda. After Israel was created, then the Arabs switched tactics to claim that Palestine had always existed as a separate territory, but it had always belonged to the Palestinians. Thus, the international community had no right to give it to the Jews. The Palestinians are a unique group of people in that they shift the claim of what land belongs to them to match whatever shape of land belongs to the Jews. Hence, why the modern chant, “From the River to the Sea, Palestine will be Free,” was copied from an earlier Arab chant that said “ “Unity, Unity, From The Taurus to Rafa, Unity, Unity.” Both chants have the same goal – to destroy the Jewish State.

Of course, the Arabs and Palestinians attribute their failure to a global conspiracy against them "conspiracy theory" for the benefit of the Jews.

However, they rarely ask themselves: How did the Jews, who were suffering from anti-Semitism throughout the world, succeed in mobilising international support for their benefit?

How did the Jews, who had not exercised any sovereignty or rule for two millennia before the establishment of Israel, succeed in establishing Zionist institutions that turned into ministries and governmental agencies for the State of Israel?

How did the Jews succeed in reviving Hebrew, which was limited to 7k words in the Torah, and derived from it a living language today that contains more than 20k words?

" There is no Palestinian nation!  There is an Arab nation, but no Palestinian nation.  This was invented by the colonial powers.  When are the Palestinians mentioned in history?  Never." - Azmi Bishara, former Arab Knesset member, on Israel television.

As for the Palestinians, they have no institutions, neither before Palestine, nor after it, nor after Israel, but rather the corrupt institutions usual in the Arab world, and only two presidents of the Palestinian Authority in 27 years.

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