Origin of The Palestinians

 Nadene Goldfoot                                               

                                              

     "It is 1,880 years since Shimon Bar Kokhba’s independent Jewish state collapsed under the weight of Roman military might. Hero or villain, Shimon bar Kokhba still exerts a strong pull on the imagination of Israelis who are either spellbound by the deeds of the iconic “muscle Jew” who challenged the might of Rome, or repelled by his violent rebellion that resulted in 1,800 years of Jewish exile."  Jews had to become warriors even before the years he had fought from 132-135 CE.  It has given the IDF soldiers their backbone, their courage after being  2nd and 3rd class people in Europe and in the Middle East for so many years, treated as filth in pogroms and daily life.  The Jews had the history of becoming slaves and being in Egypt against their will as such for 400 years.  That had to be addressed and Moses did it with the emigration back home to Canaan that lasted for 40 years.  Children were born while elders died and the result were warriors.  

Palestine first got its name through the Romans who were fighting the Jews in 132 CE who were led by their General Bar Kokhba that they fought for 3 years in Jerusalem, for Bar Kokhba had held this capital against the strongest army in the world;  the Romans, only to be slain by 135 CE.  This came as retribution from losing their land in 70 CE which meant that all Jews were forced to leave what had been Israel and was then the southern part-Judah.  The Romans were so irate as to have had to fight for so long a period against what was the remaining Jews after such a horrible ending for Jerusalem that they had named the land after the Jews' worst enemy of their history, the Philistines.  So Palestine itself was born in 135 CE.                    

Jews still lived there as well as Arabs eventually.  The land was in the hands of many empires, the last being the Ottoman Empire which held it for 400 years till 1917 when they lost the first World War.  They all were called Palestinians up to 1948, but it was not a country.  It was simply the name of the land. 

After Islam came into being, there were empires and dynasties.  There were: The Umayyad Dynasty, The Abbasid Empire, and the Ottoman Empire.  Besides that, where Iran lies, was the Safavids and their imperial institutions from 1500 to 1736.  The map of the Middle East at the beginning of the 7th century was not so very different from what it was 1,000 years later.  In the 7th century, 2 powers dominated the area, the Byzantine Empire that controlled Asia Minor, most of the Fertile Crescent where Israel lies, Egypt and North Africa. The ruler was in Constantinople.  The Sasanids of Iran dominated  the area from the Tigris to the Indus and from the Persian Gulf to the Caucasus and the Urals.  They fought each other. 

 Most of the original Arab Palestinians sold their land to Jewish buyers when Russian Jewish immigrants came in the 1st Aliyah during 1880.  There were 5 aliyote going on after that, with Jews paying the high prices Arabs asked for who could not keep up with the high taxes asked of the Ottoman Empire and they headed for Beirut and Paris, big cities where they could enjoy life.                             

    Jacob, AKA Israel and family of 70 moving to Egypt in hopes of finding son Joseph and relief from the parched Canaan.  Jews have lived in Canaan (Israel) from time immemorial.  

As Jews entered this land that was Turkish controlled, Arabs also came in when they heard of the Jewish immigration and their building sites.  They also entered looking for work with the Jews, as that's what drew them out of their countries.  Joan Peters, a journalist, wrote about it in her book, FROM TIME IMMEMORIAL, after sympathizing with the Arabs.  After doing research herself, and she went to original sources like genealogists prefer to do, had enough information about the Jews and their misery to write her also 600 page book on the origins of the Palestinian Arabs.  

Britain took control of Palestine by winning WWI with the Allies in 1917 and were given a 30 year mandate from the League of Nations that ended in 1948 when they left and the Jewish leadership were given the land as the Jewish Homeland they originally promised in meetings in the 1920s.  They called the small piece left for them, Israel.  It was very small after Britain gave away 80% of the promised land to Abdullah who was then declared king and Jordan was created from his its title of Transjordan.  

"Under the terms of the 1915 McMahon-Hussein Correspondence and the 1916 Sykes–Picot Agreement, Transjordan was intended to become part of an Arab state or a confederation of Arab states."  British forces retreated in spring 1918 from Transjordan after their first and second attacks on the territory, indicating their political ideas about its future; they had intended the area to become part of an Arab Syrian state. The British subsequently defeated the Ottoman forces in Transjordan in late September 1918, just a few weeks before the Ottoman Empire's overall surrender."

"Transjordan was not mentioned during the 1920 discussions at San Remo, at which the Mandate for Palestine was awarded."As far as the Jews were led to understand, it was a part of the Jewish Homeland plan.  

"Britain and France agreed that the eastern border of Palestine would be the Jordan river as laid out in the Sykes–Picot Agreement. That year, two principles emerged from the British government. 

1.    The first was that the Palestine government would not extend east of the Jordan; 

2,    The second was the government's chosen – albeit disputed – interpretation of the McMahon-Hussein Correspondence, which proposed that Transjordan be included in the area of "Arab independence" (excluding Palestine)".

As to the Jews:  The British government issued the Declaration, a public statement announcing support for the establishment of a "national home for the Jewish people" in Palestine, on 2 November 1917. The opening words of the declaration represented the first public expression of support for Zionism by a major political power. The term "national home" had no precedent in international law, and was intentionally vague about whether a Jewish state was contemplated. The intended boundaries of Palestine were not specified, and the British government later confirmed that the words "in Palestine" meant that the Jewish national home was not intended to cover all of Palestine."  This means that Great Britain was intentionally dishonest

 in their  treatment of a deal with  the Jewish people.

 "The second half of the declaration was added to satisfy opponents of the policy, who said that it would otherwise prejudice the position of the local population of Palestine and encourage antisemitism worldwide by (according to the presidents of the Conjoint Committee, David L. Alexander and Claude Montefiore in a letter to the Times) "stamping the Jews as strangers in their native lands". The declaration called for safeguarding the civil and religious rights for the Palestinian Arabs, who composed the vast majority of the local population, and the rights of Jewish communities in any other country."                                                                  

           Arriving in Canaan in about 1271 BCE, Moses led the Jews, mostly a mix of the 

             descendants of Jacob and his 12 sons and others taken as slaves in Egypt.  

In case the reader is not up on their Jewish history, Jews came to the land of 

Canaan by following Moses and then Joshua there from 400 years of slavery under

Egypt.  They had been original settlers in Canaan but had left during a drought for

Egypt.  Returning to Canaan with Joshua, they eventually became the nation of 

Israel under King David in 1010 BCE and this lasted until King Solomon, David's

 son, died in 920 BCE, and the kingdom divided into the northern segment of Israel

and the southern called Judah for the tribe of Judah who lived there.  Israel suffered

the attack by the Assyrians in 721 BCE when their best of the population were killed

and kidnapped and taken way.  Later, Judah suffered from the Babylonians who did

the same in 597 BCE and 586 BCE, taking them to Babylonia, where Jews seemed to have origins from 

Abraham, father of both the Arabs and Jews.  The Romans continued their hold

on Israel/Judah up until 70 CE when the largest attack on Jews occurred in 

Jerusalem.    

                                     

   The mandate system was established as a "sacred trust of civilisation" under Article 22 of Part I (the Covenant of the League of Nations) of the Treaty of      Versailles.

"The Balfour Declaration was subsequently incorporated into the Mandate for Palestine to put the declaration into effect. Unlike the declaration itself, the Mandate was legally binding on the British government."  The scrap of land offered to the Jews was accepted, as disappointed

as they were, but the Arabs refused as they have remained up to this day.  

It now appears that they plan on creating a "Palestine" country for themselves out

of the land east of the Jordan River called "The West Bank" by Jordan.  This is

the original Judea and Samaria, Samaria meaning the land surrounding the first 

capital called Samaria of Israel founded in 880 BCE by the Jewish king Omri, the

6th king after Solomon.  They plan on it being a country like Saudi Arabia-no Jews 

allowed.  Israel has 20% of the population as Arabs-Palestinian Arabs.  Jews also 

live in the West Bank as it is divided into 3 sections; A,B, and C;  one for Arabs, one

for Jews, and one for both.  The Jewish section was about to be annexed to Israel

when peace was accepted with the UAR with the proviso of no annexation.  Since

peace is the utmost goal of the Jews with their Arab neighbors, peace was chosen.

Hopefully now, this is a happening with others, and the Palestinians will someday

follow suit and stop shelling Israel.  

The Arabs calling themselves Palestinians originally came from countries around the

area and even further.  Many came from Syria, as Palestinians were called, 

'Palestinian Syrians."  Joan Peters goes into this in her book.  

During Nazi years from 1939 to 1945, Jews were trying to enter Palestine because of 

it being the Jewish Homeland but Britain kept Jews out while allowing Arabs in.

"There has been no connection made between the Arab illegal immigrants being 

imported to fill the labor demands of Western Palestine--the "Jewish National Home"-

and the countless Jewish lives taken because those Jews who would have fled to

Palestine were forbidden entry."

Resource:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mandate_for_Palestine

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McMahon%E2%80%93Hussein_Correspondence

Middle East Past & Present by Yahya Armajani and Thomas M. Ricks-textbook at Portland State U.