As a geographical term, Palestine is a region extending inland from the eastern shore of the Mediterranean Sea, but its extent has varied over time and never had precisely defined borders.
The 5th century B.C. Greek historian Herodotus, and later Ptolemy and Pliny, refered to the eastern coast of the Mediterranean as "Syria Palaestina", and it is generally accepted that the region they referred to extended further inland than the domain of the Philistines.
During the Biblical Period, it was the site of the ancient Canaan and the ancient kingdoms of Israel and Judah, and later of the independent Jewish kingdom of Judea.
In A.D. 135, the Roman emperor Hadrian named the province Provincia Syria Palaestina, which is the Latin version of the Greek name and it became an administrative political unit within the Roman Empire. In the 4th century A.D., Palaestina was further organised into three units: First, Second, and Third Palaestina.
During the Arab empire, Palestine was sometimes an adminstrative district. According to a 10th century Arab source:
Changing Boundaries over Time
During the period 1100-1300 AD, it was a center of the conflict between the Islamic sphere and Western Christendom.
During the Ottoman empire there was no political district called Palestine, but the name was used informally for a portion of Syria that extended in the north-south direction typically from Raphia (south-east of Gaza) to the Litani River (now in Lebanon). The western boundary was the sea, and the eastern boundary was the poorly-defined place where the Syrian desert began. In Western literature, the eastern boundary was placed anywhere from the Jordan River to slightly east of Amman. The Negev desert was not included.
After World War I, the League of Nations created the Mandate of Palestine under British control. According to the result of negotations with France, the northern boundary was set at the position of the present northern border of Israel (with tiny exceptions) and the large part of the Negev now in Israel was included. To the east of the Jordan River, the Mandate included a large region approximately co-terminous with modern-day Jordan. However, even before the Mandate came into legal effect in 1922, British terminology applied the word Palestine to the part west of the Jordan River and Trans-Jordan (or Transjordania) to the part east of the Jordan River. This terminology was applied consistently during the Mandate period and it is difficult to find any official documents that use any name other than "Palestine and Trans-Jordan" when referring to the whole area of the Mandate. Nevertheless, the fact that "Palestine" was once considered to include lands on the east side of the Jordan River continues even today to have significance in political discourse.
Since the establishment of the modern State of Israel, it has been the focus of the Arab-Israeli conflict.
Since the end of the British mandate (in 1948), there has been no existing political entity called "Palestine". However, in 1988, the PLO unilaterally declared the establishment of an independent state called the State of Palestine. At the time, however, the PLO did not actually control any part of the land, so Palestine (in this sense) was a "state" without territory. "The State of Palestine" did not receive international recognition, except by the countries of the Arab League, and a handful other Muslim countries.
Recently there is an ongoing international political move to establish a Palestinian state in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. If such a state will indeed be established, it is likely to be called "Palestine" and to receive wide international recognition. In this event, the term "Palestine" will once again have a concrete political meaning.
main article: History of Palestine
Around 1200 BCE the Hittite empire is conquered by allied tribes from the north. The northern, coastal Canaanites (called the Phoenicians by the Greeks) are temporarily displaced, but return when the invading tribes show no inclination to settle. The Egyptians called the horde that swept across Asia Minor and the Mediterranean the Sea Peoples. At the head of this alliance of Sea Peoples were the Philistines, which possibly originated on the island of Crete. The region in which they settled is known as Philistia.
See the article on history of ancient Israel and Judah .
The Romans ruled Judea through local client kings from 63 BC to 66 CE. In 70 CE the Romans put down an uprising in the kingdom and destroyed the Temple. A second uprising, 132-135, was similarly suppressed, the area was reorganized as the Roman province of Palestina, and the capital, Jerusalem, was dedicated to Jupiter and renamed Aelia Capitolina. After these two bloody uprisings (and other Jewish-led uprisings in other parts of the Mediterranean) in a span of seventy years, Jews were expelled from Jerusalem and its surrounding districts. The Jewish population in the north of Palestine remained large for several centuries.
With the rise of Islam in the 600s AD came the subsequent Arab military conquest of much of the region.
Palestine was the site of Crusaders Kingdom of Jerusalem during the the 11th century.
In 1516 the Ottoman Turks occupied Palestine. The country became part of the Ottoman Empire. Constantinople appointed local governors. Public works were rebuilt in Jerusalem by Suleiman the Magnificent in 1537. Turkish rule lasted until World War I.
Today this area is at the heart of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Arabs refer to this area as Palestine, (in Arabic: Filastin). Jews refer to this area as Eretz Yisrael (Hebrew: "the land of Israel".)
The Kingdom of Jordan consists of the eastern three-quarters of the former British mandate of Palestine. In 1970, the PLO (Palestine Liberation Organization) attempted to conquer Jordan by an armed revolt. After their defeat in armed conflict by Jordanian forces in the early 1970s, most Palestinian Arabs have since given up on this goal. Most Palestinians currently hold that any future Palestinian state will be based on territory solely in Israeli control at the moment.
In the West Bank and Gaza Strip, which are under Israeli occupation, many citizens are under administration of the Palestinian Authority (PA). A significant minority of Israeli settlers exists; they are considered illegal by the international community, but not by the Israeli government.
The boundaries of the region are not clearly defined and have changed greatly over time. The region is currently divided into: the Gaza Strip, the Golan Heights, The State of Israel, The Kingdom of Jordan and the West Bank.
During the Biblical Period, Palestine or Eretz Plishtim, was limited to five coastal cities and their crop lands located between present day Gaza city and Tel-Aviv. The five cities, in order from the south northwards were: Gaza, Asqelon, Ashdod, Ekron and Gat.
The territory was under the control of the Ottoman Empire until the end of World War I. At this time, the area to the west of the Jordan River was made up of the Sanjaks of Acre and Balqa to the North, and the independent Sanjak of Jerusalem to the South. The northern two Sanjaks, together with four others further north, made up the Vilayet of Beirut. The region to the east of the Jordan was a part of the Vilayet of Syria see map: [1] . The East Bank of the Jordan River was at times joined to the lands west of it, and at times separated; in most periods the Jordan river was a border line between the two areas.
The British Mandate of Palestine, granted to Britain in 1920 but not official until 1923, included both the region west of the Jordan River and a larger tract to the east. However, in most respects the two regions were administered separately and official documents always referred to "Palestine and Transjordan". A government led by the Hussein family of Hijaz was formed in Transjordan and eventually became independent in 1946. The United Nations General Assembly on November 29, 1947 voted to partition Palestine between Arabs and Jews. In 1948, Transjordan annexed the West Bank (though very few countries recognised the annexation) and in 1950 it changed its name to The Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan.
Most Jews, many Christians, and some Palestinians argue that despite the British policy of administrating the territories separately, the term "Palestine" should include modern Jordan also. From the 1960s to the 1980s internal and public PLO documents stated that the goal of the PLO was to create a Palestinian state in all of Jordan, Israel, the West Bank and Gaza, all of which they termed "Palestine". This led to attempts by Palestinians to overthrow the Jordanian monarchy, which led to the expulsion of the PLO from Jordan in September 1970. As a result, "Palestine" has come to mean only territory west of the Jordan river.
The oldest names for the region are found in the Bible: (Eretz) Yisrael "(land of) Israel", Eretz Ha-Ivrim "land of the Hebrews", "land flowing with milk and honey", "land that [God] swore to your fathers to assign to you", "Holy Land", and "land of the LORD". The portion of the land lying west of the Jordan was also called "land of Canaan" during the period in which it fell under the control of Egyptian vassals traditionally descended from Canaan the son of Ham. The region of the southern kingdom after the division of the Jewish kingdom into two was called "land of Judah". Egyptian writings refer to the region as R-t-n-u (for convenience pronounced Retenu), claimed by some to be a corruption of the Hebrew Artzenu meaning "our land".
The name "Palestine" is used in the Bible (Pleshet in Hebrew), to denote the coastal region inhabited by the Philistines. Usage of the term, usually in the form "Syria Palestina", to denote the inland areas as well was common among Greek writers as early as Herodotus. Josephus, however, apparently intended by the name only the land of the Phillistines. The Philistines (meaning "invaders" in Hebrew) were an invading people of obscure origin who were finally subjugated by David and later assimilated into the Jewish people. As noted above, the Romans changed the region's name from "Judea" to "Palestina" in the Second century.
One story has it that the Roman Procurator in charge of the captured Jewish territories called for historians and asked them who were the worst enemies of the Jews in their history. The historians replied, "the Philistines"; thus, the Procurator declared that the Land of Israel would from then forward be called "Palestina" to dishonor the Jews and obliterate their history.
The territories captured by Israel since the Six-Day War are three:
It should be noted that neither the Gaza Strip, nor the West Bank are formally claimed by any generally recognized state -- both Egypt and Jordan revoked their demands to them at the signing of peace treaties with Israel. The "State of Palestine", whose independence was declared by the PLO in the 1980s, claims these territories, but most countries do not recognize the "State of Palestine" as a state. According to the 1993 Oslo Accords, the final status of the West Bank and Gaza is subject to a final settlement between Israel and the Palestinians, temporary agreements now being in place. The status of the Golan Heights is subject to an agreement with Syria.
UN Security Council Resolution 242 (1967) and Resolution 338 (1973) state that the status of the territories needs to be resolved by negotiations, and requires Israel to withdraw from these territories. The Israeli government, and some critics world-wide maintain that the wording of these resolutions is extremely ambiguous and no longer relevant due to the changing political situation in the region.
Today "Palestine" is most often used to refer to the captured territories, and "Palestinians" to refer to the non-Israeli population of these areas. Palestine is recognized as a state by many Arab and Islamic states, and as such Palestine is a member of the League of Arab States.
The area of the West Bank has been divided to three zones:
The Palestinian refugees were created in two events, first in the 1948 Arab-Israeli war and secondly after Israel's invasion of the West Bank in the Six-day war.
On midnight on May 14, 1948, the last British soldiers departed and the new state of Israel was proclaimed. By then, Palestine was already in a state of war, the Arab Liberation Army had entered the land to fight for the Palestinians against the Jews. West Jerusalem and parts of the Old City were under Jewish control, but the city was effectively under Arab siege. Jaffa had been captured by Jews, as well a corridor between the coast and Jerusalem. Arab inhabitants of that area had launched numerous attacks on the young Jewish state's vital route; because of that, several Arab villages had been destroyed according to Plan Dalet, and their inhabitants expelled, in order to remove the Arab the siege from Jerusalem.
In response to the declaration of the State of Israel and alleged Jewish atrocities against Palestinian civilians, armies from surrounding Arab states entered Palestine, thus beginning the 1948 war, which was lost by the Arabs.
By the end of this war, there were between 400,000 and 850,000 Arab refugees. (Progress Report of the United Nations Mediator on Palestine, Submitted to the Secretary-General for Transmission to the Members of the United Nations, General Assembly Official Records: Third Session, Supplement No.11 (A/648), Paris, 1948) The Palestinian refugees have not been permitted to return home.
A fiercely contested question is exactly how the refugees came to flee the country. Some hold that most Palestinian Arabs left their homes because they were encouraged to do so by the surrounding Arab states, through various media, such as radio broadcasts in order the clear the area for operations by the invading Arab armies. Some international observers and historians have stated that most of them left because some were driven out by force from the Haganah and the Jewish undergrounds or fled in fear of massacres. Separate articles exist on Palestinian refugees, Jewish refugees and the Palestinian Exodus.
In the Six-day War 1967, 300,000 additional Palestinians were evicted from their homes. 180,000 of them were resettled refugees from the 1948 war which became refugees anew.
There were also a large number of Jewish refugees from surrounding Arab states created by the 1948 war. Most of them were forced to leave due to riots, incitement, and attacks against the Jewish community. An examination of IDF files from the time shows that there were also instances of Israeli agents trying to provoke Jewish populations into leaving for Israel.
It is generally recognized that both Jewish and Arab refugees have a right to return home. The United Nations General Assembly Resolution 194 (December 1948) Paragraph 1, states:
History of Palestine
Pre-biblical history
In the Bible
The Roman conquest
The rise of Islam
Crusader Kingdom
The Ottoman period
The region today
Jordan and Palestine
Political and military control
Geographic boundaries
The Name
Status of territories captured in the Six-Day War
Modern terminology
See Proposals for a Palestinian state for a discussion of the current argument for the future development of this situation.Refugees
Palestinian refugees
Jewish refugees
Resolutions
In the negotiations between the Palestinian Authority and the Israeli government, both parties signed an agreement saying that financial compensation was a necessary and legitimate way of dealing with many of the refugees from both sides.Related Articles:
External links
Some of the links below represent Palestinian point of view; others represent the Israeli point of view. Unfortunately much of the information on this issue, from both points of view, is closer to propaganda than unbiased factual reporting. Israeli links
Palestinian links
U.N. links
![[1]](http://www.un.org/Depts/dpa/qpal/maps/M3007x.gif){kind=link}