history of palestine

history of palestine

The Rich History of Palestine: A Comprehensive Study

1. Introduction to Palestine: Geographical and Historical Overview

In present day, Palestine is located in the heart of the world’s most volatile arena, the Middle East. Historically, Palestine has shown many diverse faces over 5,000 years: The land was the gateway through which nomadic, sedentary, and civilized races emerged. In the past 3,000 years, Palestine has been known under many different names, including Canaan, Asir, Seldi, Palaistina, and Holy Land. The region’s name has changed and evolved, but its essence remains strong and constant throughout the portals of time. For 4,000 years, it has been known as the domicile of the Semitic people, and with the spread of Christianity and Islam, the surrounding regions were predominant to its history. The Arab Islamic link with the region and the Arab character of Palestine has been shaped by 1,300 years of Muslim Arab culture. It is contended that Palestine has a rich, unique history and glorious legacy of successive Islamic, Arab, Christian, Philistine, and other civilizations in Palestine.

The term “Palestine” is derived from the Egyptian and Hebrew languages, meaning “land of the Philistines,” the Aegean coastal dwellers who settled along the Mediterranean coast of what is today known as the State of Israel and Gaza Strip. The Hebrew name for the area was “Canaan” and was later referred to as “Judaea” after the destruction of the northern part of the Kingdom of Israel. The Arab word “Jund Filastin” (district of Palestine) was widely used under the Umayyad and Abbasid rule.

2. Ancient Civilizations and Empires in Palestine

II. The ancient names of Palestine. We can with certainty call the land of Palestine by no other name than that to which it was called by the Canaanites; which in some of their inscriptions they called the “Land of Canaan,” and in others they called the “Land of Amurru.” Children of Amurru, that is, children of Canaan, is the designation of the whole nation. All the other names that we know of are either names of towns, tribes, mountains, plains, or some such specific places. After the Canaanites, the country was occupied by the Philistines, the Hebrews, the Assyrians, the Babylonians, and, last of all, the Greeks and Romans. In the period of the Assyrians and the Babylonians, to the aborigine names were appended the words “land”, “region”, or “country”.

I. The dawn of history. The history of Palestine from the beginning of mankind can be and is being divided into stages that have their own interesting characteristics. The most interesting of these stages are the Bronze Age, which has mainly come down to us through archaeology and what is written, the Iron Age, which has come down to us through what is written and what is told us by Herodotus the Father of history and Father of lies, and the last four stages of which we have fairly accurate accounts. The last four stages, that is, the Neo-Assyrian, the Neo-Babylonian, the Persian, and Alexander the Great stages, have so many and varied sources that there is no need for speculation about them.

3. Palestine Under Ottoman Rule and British Mandate

Muhammad al-Zikri lectured in the mosques of Istanbul, became a teacher in many of Istanbul’s large and renowned colleges, and associated with some of the high circles in Ottoman society. He is well-known among Arab historians by his city chronicle A Picture of My Home City Istanbul, not only his most famous work, but also the crowning event in his literary life. Very few Palestine works have been published from the city chronicle genre. Some of the oldest of these adab and manuscript works are Qudsi’s The Remarkable Book of Jaffa. All these works provide important information about the state of Palestinian cities during the Ottoman Empire. This study, as a city chronicle, also gives an important contribution to the field in the introduction, section notes, and translation sections.

Additionally, from this Ottoman outpost, and in the context of the many books written at the time trying to polemically justify or make the case for their patron empire, a new genre appeared in Arabic literature, the “City” literature describing Istanbul, its palaces, its mosques, its harems, court rituals, and urban life. Among others, these books include. The latest city chronicle to appear from the pen of a great author of the tradition of city literature is A Picture of My Home City Istanbul, by the Palestinian author Muhammad al-Zikri, published in this series.

4. The Palestinian-Israeli Conflict: Origins and Developments

The roots of this conflict had come as a result of the Jewish exile from their land as occupying hostile forces subdued them and, after capturing Jerusalem, coerced them into bondage and exile, probably once under the Persians, twice by the Romans, and a fourth time by the Umayyads. These periods had witnessed the massacre of the Jewish population, the demolition of the Temple, and the ruins of Jerusalem and the planting of vineyards over great swathes of it. The Roman emperor Hadrian desecrated the site of the destroyed Temple by the construction of a Roman temple over it, with a statue of Zeus on the platform adorned with robes identical to those of the Jewish High Priest, a further humiliation of the Jews. Such successive acts of tyranny, discrimination, violation, and humiliation had produced an incorrigible anti-Semitic principle intended to humiliate the Jews and to destroy the faith of Judaism, including the renaming of Jerusalem to ‘Aelia Capitolina’, and of Judea to ‘Palaestina’, after the historical biblical enemy of Judah. Such actions were designed to hide the Jewish identity of the land by othering them, in a clear sense of fitnah, attributing it to a set of unrelated Palestinians, domesticated by unproved legends and forged opinions, if any.

The land of Palestine, known historically and contemporarily as Canaan and Israel, is rich in history, significance, and strategic value. It is home to holy sites of Semitic religions—Jewish, Christian, and Muslim, who collectively and severally constitute the Abrahamic religions that claim referential descent from the Prophet Abraham. It was the land that the liberated children of Israel—in their journey of acquiring faith and devotion—were drawn to it, and from it, they expanded to the surrounding neighboring areas in an attempt to elevate until they established a state. This state saw an era of its prosperity when the kings David and Solomon ruled it, a state that lasted for centuries before being invaded and occupied by foreign invaders. Such was the initial seed of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, the roots of which could be traced back to antiquity and unwound at the modern productive period.

5. Contemporary Palestine: Political, Social, and Cultural Landscape

Palestinian culture is strong and persistent: the largest proportion of the Palestinian people remains in pre-1948 Palestine including the larger West Bank and the Golan Heights as well as East Jerusalem and the Gaza Strip. Since the sea connects to the West Bank was not in its original size. It is a country rich in traditional and modern heritage: a proud academic record in modern times; rich literature; rich arts, crafts, and intercultural vulgar cultures; and a proud uprising against colonization and dedication to fight for independence and tranquility. Besides the extensive destruction that has occurred for natural and human causes, the people of Palestine and the rest of the world are too close and long to recognize. Palestine is at an exciting point of its long and complex history. Such complexity demands a broad vision. The key mission for those supporting Palestine is to see this nation’s narrative that is regionalized as the humanitarian global one. The establishment of a Palestinian state is not just another matter, but the essence of regional peace. The Shock Plan, other projects seeking to resolve shareholders’ conflict or implementation of a so-called one-state solution resulting in some parts, is a mere business agreement. Only ways to the final step are all conceivable: a deal resulting from negotiations in which the international community supports both the needs and the rights of Palestinians. The textbooks and children’s narrative on both sides of the border must not overrun established tracks. They must come and recognize their history and affiliation with this particular piece of mother earth. As for the inhabitants of several hundreds of Palestinian cities, districts, and camps around the world, and bow to negotiate a simple psychological victory rhetoric and realize that regardless of the negotiations that open the border with the real Palestinians, there is no land.

The second half of the twentieth century saw a rapid onset of complex changes and developments in the Palestinian territories that have shone a unique light on the civilizational importance of this richly historical country. Palestine has stood witness to these concepts of human civilization: from prehistory to the Phoenicians to the Romans, to the Islamic dynasties, to the Crusaders and to the Mamluks, and from the Ottomans to Western colonialism until to the Arab-Israeli struggle and occupation. The contemporary political landscape of Palestine highlights the particular and pressing nature of the Palestinian situation and challenges. The lack of emotional and environmental stability in the area of Ex-Palestine is currently deeply regrettable, with Palestinian refugee camps, despite increased humanitarian concretions of the displaced people through the UNRWA, resolved, and the relief role is impoverished as settlements increase, the West Bank conduit construction expands, and Jerusalem is treated with little regard for Al-Aksa Mosque and religious Christian sites in particular. A variety of popular weather ascends in the strip of Gaza under unbearable siege conditions.