Where does the name Palestine come from? It is a derivative of Philistia, which was the region that appears in the Bible in approximately 1200 BC. bordering the kingdoms of Israel to the northeast and Judah to the east when the monarchy of the Hebrew people was divided. This coastal region of the Mediterranean Sea north and south of Gaza was occupied and invaded by the Philistines who came across the sea, a people from the Aegean Sea, more closely related to the Greeks and with no ethnic, linguistic or historical connection to Arabia.
In the Hebrew language the verbal root of the name is “pa•lash” פלשתין, which means “invader”, “intruder”.
The Philistines are known in the Bible through the stories of David against Goliath and Samson and Delilah.
The Philistines as a people disappeared and the people of Israel survived in biblical history and this was also proven in archaeological findings.
I mean there is no relationship between the Philistines of the past and the Palestinians of today.
The name Palestine would be used many centuries later to determine a region. The Emperor of Rome Adrian when he defeated the Jews in the second Jewish rebellion against the Roman Empire in 135 AD. changed the name of Jerusalem to Aelia Capitalina and then called the entire area of Judea Sirio Coele Palestine not only to de-Judaize the region but also to use the name of Israel’s ancient biblical enemies, the Philistines as punishment for the Jews.
Then during the Roman Christian Byzantine period between the 4th and 6th centuries AD the region was renamed Palestine and was divided into three regions: Palestina Prima, Palestina Secunda and Palestina Tertia.
Between the year 634 and 638 AD. The Islamic Empire for the first time conquered this region that was held by the Christian Byzantines and divided it into two areas, one was called Jund Filastin (which included Jerusalem) and the other Jund Al-Urdunn to the north. Then several empires battled each other over the centuries and with the conquest of the Ottoman Turkish empire taking portions of Europe, Asia, and Africa between 1516 and 1917, the region became part of that empire.
There was no entity called “Palestine” under the Ottoman Empire. It fell under the administrative divisions of the Turks. Under the Ottoman Turks, the territory was divided into three states: the Jerusalem Division, the Gaza Division, and the Nablus Division. All of them were linked to the Ottoman government or administration through the Damascus Province.
There were significant waves of thousands of Jews arriving around 1840 through 1880 and continuing in the following years. The Ottoman Empire was dismembering at the end of the nineteen century and by allying itself with Germany in the First World War it ended up losing much of what it had conquered on the different continents.
Some of the Arab owners of the territories in the region under Ottoman Turkish rule sold large areas of territory to the Zionist Jews, and the establishment of agricultural communities to work the land gave rise to the so-called kibbutzim. At the same time, the Ottoman Empire negotiated many sites with the colonial European powers that claimed a piece of the holy land, hence the existence of various Christian churches representing different countries that exist to this day in Jerusalem and other parts of Israel.
At the end of the Ottoman Empire the population of the region contained Arabs, Jews and, in a much smaller number, Christians and other minorities.
The British Empire in 1917 succeeded the Turkish Ottoman Empire.
The United Kingdom and France as colonial empires divided portions of Africa and the Middle East.
The name Palestine became a common name that did not determine a state or a country but was part of a territory under the control of the governing authorities, and with the arrival of the British Empire it would gain strength.
What would be called the Palestine mandate remained in the hands of the British until their withdrawal in 1948.
The Balfour Declaration of 1917 looked favorably on the establishment of a home or nation for the Jews in this land, which was the biblical ancestral land of the Jewish people. But the British also promised territory to the Arabs.
The Jews who had already emigrated before and during the British period, called this region Israel and Palestine, therefore there were Palestinian Jews and Palestinian Arabs, but not an established country yet, but a geographical region that with the arrival of the English would be disputed between Jews and Arabs.
Local Palestinian Arabs under the leadership of the mufti, the religious leader of the Muslims of Jerusalem, named Haj Amin al Hussein (who would later align himself with Hitler and the Nazis) began to persecute and attack the Jewish communities of the British Palestinian mandate long before the creation of the state of Israel and among the violent pogroms and massacres, the one in 1929 in Hebron stands out where innocent Jews and entire families were murdered by the Arabs led by the mufti Haj Amin al Hussein. Very similar to what Hamas did on October 7, 2023.
A very important detail is that the Palestine mandate initially covered everything that is currently Israel, including the disputed territories where a large part of the Palestinians reside today plus all the territory that Jordan currently possesses, that is, Palestine reached the border with Iraq.
The British Empire decided to divide Palestine into two territories in 1922, that was the first partition.
From that division the United Kingdom gave the territory east of the Jordan River to the Hashemite Arab Emirate and was called Transjordan, which would later be called Jordan and to the west of the Jordan River the mandate of Palestine remained under British rule. The British Empire had strong interests in Arab oil.
The Palestinian Arab movement would emerge shortly after Zionism.
Between 1936 and 1938 the Arab lobby managed to pressure the British Empire to issue the infamous white paper that prohibited the immigration of Jews to the Palestinian mandate in the harshest period for European Jews when they were being exterminated by the Nazis.
With the Jews who had already lived in the region of Palestine for a long time and with the immigration that was escaping the Holocaust in quotas restricted by the oil interests of the English and fear of the Arabs, the bases of the dispute for this land were being prepared for the day the English would withdraw.
When the British perceived the difficulty of remaining in this place, they decided to hand over the mandate to the League of Nations, and on November 29, 1947, there was a vote in the United Nations to divide the mandate into two states, one Jewish and the other Arab, and that It was the second partition.
The vote of the majority of countries was in favor of partition, which determined two states, one Jewish and the other Arab. The Jews came out to celebrate in Israel and throughout the world the historic decision to have a country after almost 2000 years of exile and accepted a Palestinian Arab country next to Israel even though the territory granted to the Jews was very small, while the Arabs against the world decision decided that not one inch would be granted to the Jews to have a country. The Palestinian Arabs, following the United Nations resolution, attacked the Jews on strategic routes and sites and the first battles between both sides broke out. After a few months, on May 14, 1948, the Prime Minister of Israel David Ben Gurion declared the state of Israel and immediately a coalition of Arab countries formed by Egypt, Jordan, Syria, Lebanon and Iraq attacked Israel on different fronts. The coalition of Arab countries that attacked Israel persuaded the Arab Palestinians to leave their homes saying that after the Arab coalition would throw the Jews into the sea they could return. Against all odds, Israel won the war and to the great surprise of them and the entire world, Israel defeated all those Arab nations and expanded its territory.
The Arabs of the nations that invaded Israel wanted to take portions of the territories and it was not in their plans to give the Palestinians a state. The Egyptians were initially interested in Gaza and the Mediterranean coast of Israel in addition to Jerusalem, Syria in conquering the Galilee, Jordan in Jerusalem and also what today the international press calls the West Bank (Shomron and Samaria) where the majority of Palestinians reside.
In the war of independence in 1948 Israel won its country and secured a state. The Palestinians, by not accepting a Jewish state next to theirs, ended up losing not only to Israel but also that Gaza strip where the Palestinians resided was left in the hands of Egypt and The West Bank, where Palestinians also resided, was incorporated into the territory of Jordan until 1967.
Not being informed or not reading history is resigning yourself to being manipulated by the press and not understand that the Palestinians and the Arabs are the main culprits and responsible for starting the wars before and after 1948. The origin of this conflict is the permanent denial to the Jewish people of a free and independent sovereign state and this issue obsesses the Muslim world much more than whether or not the Palestinians have their free state alongside Israel.
Author
Adiel Wajsman
Licensed Tour Guide
November 26, 2023