Palestine (region)

For other uses, see the geographical area known as Palestine and Palestine.

The Holy Land or Palestine Showing not only the Old Kingoms of Judea and Israel but also the 12 Tribes Distinctly, and Confirming Even the Diversity of the Locations of their Ancient Positions and Doing So as the Holy Scriptures Indicate, a geographic map from the studio of Tobiae Conradi Lotter, 1759

Palestine (from Latin: Palaestina; Hebrew: פלשת Pleshet, פלשתינה Palestina; Arabic: فلسطين Filastīn, Falastīn) is one of several names for the geographic region between the Mediterranean Sea and the banks of the Jordan River with various adjoining lands. Many different definitions of the region have been used in the past three millennia.

Other English names for this geographical region include: Land of Israel (Hebrew: ארץ ישראל Erets Yisrael), Holy Land ([ארץ הקדש Erets Ha-Kodesh] Error: {{Lang-xx}}: text has italic markup (help); Latin: Terra Sancta; Arabic: الأرض المقدسة al-Ard al-Muqaddasah), Canaan, and Cisjordan. The various names for the region are understood differently and are not identical in meaning.

Boundaries and name

Map of the southern Levant, c.830s BCE.

  Kingdom of Judah

  Kingdom of Israel

  Philistine city-states

  Phoenician states

  Kingdom of Ammon

  Kingdom of Edom

  Kingdom of Aram-Damascus

  Aramean tribes

  Arubu tribes

  Nabatu tribes

  Assyrian Empire

  Kingdom of Moab

Ancient Egyptian texts call the entire levantine coastal area R-t-n-u (conventionally Retenu), which stretched along the Mediterranean coast in between modern Egypt and Turkey. It subdivided into three regions. Retenu's southern region (called Djahy) approximates modern Israel with the Palestinian Territories, the central region Lebanon, and the northern region (called Amurru) the Syrian coast as far north as the Orontes River near Turkey.

During the Israelite Period (or Iron Age), the Kingdom of Israel of the United Monarchy reigned from Jerusalem over an area approximating modern Israel with the Palestinian Territories but extending farther westward and northward to cover much (but not all) of the greater Land of Israel. After the split, the southern part became the Kingdom of Judah, and the northern part the Kingdom of Israel.

The term "Palestine" derives from the word Philistine, the name of a non-Semitic ethnic group, who inhabited a smaller area on the southern coast, called Philistia, whose borders approximate the modern Gaza Strip. Philistia encompassed the five cities of Gaza, Ashkelon, Ashdod, Ekron, and Gath. The Egyptian texts of the temple at Medinet Habu, record a people called the P-r-s-t (conventionally Peleset), one of the Sea Peoples who invaded Egypt in Ramesses III's reign. This is considered very likely to be a reference to the Philistines. The Hebrew name Peleshet (Hebrew: פלשת Pəléshseth), usually translated as Philistia in English, is used in the Bible to denote their southern coastal region. The Assyrian emperor Sargon II called it the Palashtu in his Annals. The Philistines seem to have disappeared as a distinct ethnic group by the Assyrian period, however the name of their land remained. During the Persian Period, the Greek form was first used in the 5th century BCE by Herodotus who wrote of a "district of Syria, called Palaistinêi" (whence Latin: Palaestina, whence English: Palestine). The boundaries of the area he referred to were not explicitly stated, but Josephus used the name only for the smaller coastal area, Philistia. Ptolemy also used the term. In Latin, Pliny mentions a region of Syria that was "formerly called Palaestina" among the areas of the Eastern Mediterranean.

During the Roman Period, the Province of Judea (including Samaria) covered most of Israel and the Palestinian territories. But following the Bar Kokhba rebellion, the Romans redrew these borders into the new Provinces of Syria Palestine (Latin: Syria Palaestina) (including Judea) and Samaria.

During the Byzantine Period, this entire region (including Syria Palestine, Samaria, and Galilee) was renamed Palaestina and then subdivided into Diocese I and II. The Byzantines also renamed an area of land including the Negev, Sinai, and the west coast of the Arabian Peninsula as Palaestina Salutoris, sometimes called Palaestina III. Since the Byzantine Period, the Byzantine borders of Palaestina (I and II) have served as a name for the geographic area between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea.

Holy Texts

The Hebrew Bible calls the region Canaan (Hebrew: כּנען) when referring to the pre-Israelite period and thereafter Israel (Yisrael). The name "Land of the Hebrews" (Hebrew: ארץ העברים, Eretz Ha-Ivrim) is also found as well as several poetical names: "land flowing with milk and honey", "land that [God] swore to your fathers to assign to you", "Holy Land", "Land of the Lord", and the "Promised Land". The Land of Canaan is given a precise description in (34:1 Numbers 34:1–12), and included all of Lebanon (13:5 Joshua 13:5). The wide area appears to be the habitat of the ancient ethnic Hebrews, albeit shared with other ethnic groups. It is even said to extend as far as the Euphrates River 15:18 Genesis 15:18 including an area called Aram Naharaim, which includes Haran in modern Turkey, from where Abraham the ancestor of the Israelites departed.

The events of the Four Gospels of the Christian Bible take place entirely in Palestine.

In the Qur'an, the term الأرض المقدسة ("Holy Land", Al-Ard Al-Muqaddasah) is mentioned at least seven times, once when Moses proclaims to the Children of Israel: "O my people! Enter the holy land which Allah hath assigned unto you, and turn not back ignominiously, for then will ye be overthrown, to your own ruin." (Surah 5:21)

History

Main articles: History of Palestine, History of Israel

For early history of the region see History of Palestine, Archaeology of Israel, History of ancient Israel and Judah

Roman Iudaea Province in the 1st century CE.

5th century CE: Byzantine Diocese of Palaestina I (Philistia, Judea and Samaria) and Palaestina II (Galilee and Perea)

An 1890 map of Palestine as described by medieval Arab geographers, with the junds of northern Jordan and southern Filastin

Roman period

As a result of the First Jewish-Roman War (66-73), Titus sacked Jerusalem and destroyed the Second Temple, leaving only the Western Wall. In 135, following the fall of a Jewish revolt led by Bar Kokhba in 132–135, the Roman emperor Hadrian expelled most Jews from Judea, leaving large Jewish populations in Samaria and the Galilee. He also changed the name of the Roman province of Judea (Israel) to Syria Palaestina named after the Philistines as an insult to the now conquered Jews. In what was considered a form of psychological warfare, the Romans also tried to change the name of Jerusalem to Aelia Capitolina, but that had less staying power. Over time the name Syria Palaestina was shortened to Palaestina, which by then had become an administrative political unit within the Roman Empire.

Byzantine (Eastern Roman Empire) period

In approximately 390, Palaestina was further organised into three units: Palaestina Prima, Secunda, and Tertia (First, Second, and Third Palestine). Palaestina Prima consisted of Judea, Samaria, the coast, and Peraea with the governor residing in Caesarea. Palaestina Secunda consisted of the Galilee, the lower Jezreel Valley, the regions east of Galilee, and the western part of the former Decapolis with the seat of government at Scythopolis. Palaestina Tertia included the Negev, southern Jordan — once part of Arabia — and most of Sinai with Petra the usual residence of the governor. Palestina Tertia was also known as Palaestina Salutaris. This reorganization reduced Arabia to the northern Jordan east of Peraea. Byzantine administration of Palestine ended temporarily during the Persian occupation of 614–28, then permanently after the rise of Islam in the Arabian Peninsula and the Islamic armies conquering the region beginning in 635.

The Caliphate period

The muslim rulers divided the province of ash-Sham (Arabic for Greater Syria) into five districts. Jund Filastin (Arabic جند فلسطين, literally "the army or military district of Palestine") was a region extending from the Sinai to south of the plain of Acre. At times it reached down into the Sinai. Major towns included Rafah, Caesarea, Gaza, Jaffa, Nablus, Jericho, Ramla and Jerusalem. Initially Ludd (Lydda) was the capital, but in 717 it was moved to the new city of ar-Ramlah (Ramla). (The capital was not moved to Jerusalem until much later, when the organization into Junds was already breaking down.) Jund al-Urdunn (literally "Jordan") was a region to the north and east of Filastin. Major towns included Tiberias, Legio, Acre, Beisan and Tyre. The capital was at Tiberias. Various political upheavals led to readjustments of the boundaries several times. After the 10th century, the division into Junds began to break down and the Turkish invasions of the 1070s, followed by the first Crusade, completed that process.

See also the Mideastweb map of "Palestine Under the Caliphs", showing Jund boundaries (external link).

Crusader period

See the articles on the Crusades and the Kingdom of Jerusalem.

Mamluk period

After Muslim control over Palestine was reestablished in the 12th and 13th centuries, the division into districts was reinstated, with boundaries that were frequently redrawn. 1263/Jul 1291 the country was part of the Mamluk Sultanate of Egypt.

Around the end of the 13th century, Palestine comprised several of nine emirates of Syria, namely the "Kingdoms" of Gaza (including Ascalon and Hebron), Karak (including Jaffa and Legio), Safad (including Safad, Acre, Sidon and Tyre) and parts of the Kingdom of Damascus (sometimes extending as far south as Jerusalem).

By the middle of the 14th century, Syria had again been divided into five districts, of which Filastin included Jerusalem (its capital), Ramla, Ascalon, Hebron and Nablus, while Hauran included Tiberias (its capital).

Ottoman period

After the Ottoman conquest, the name disappeared as the official name of an administrative unit, as the Turks often called their (sub)provinces after the capital. Since its 1516 incorporation in the Ottoman Empire, it was part of the vilayet (province) of Damascus-Syria until 1660, next of the vilayet of Saida (seat in Lebanon), shortly interrupted by the 7 March 1799 - July 1799 French occupation of Jaffa, Haifa, and Caesarea. On 10 May 1832 it was one of the Turkish provinces annexed by Muhammad Ali's shortly imperialistic Egypt (nominally still Ottoman), but in November 1840 direct Ottoman rule was restored.

Still the old name remained in popular and semi-official use. Many examples of its usage in the 16th and 17th centuries have survived. During the 19th century, the "Ottoman Government employed the term Arz-i Filistin (the 'Land of Palestine') in official correspondence, meaning for all intents and purposes the area to the west of the River Jordan which became 'Palestine' under the British in 1922". Amongst the educated Arab public, Filastin was a common concept, referring either to the whole of Palestine or to the Jerusalem sanjaq alone or just to the area around Ramle.

The Ottoman Sultan discouraged all large-scale immigration to Palestine, replying to a request by Rabbi Joseph Nantonek for permission to settle Jews in 1876 that "almost all lands in Palestine were occupied, and that the autonomy sought by Nantonek was incompatible with the administrative principles of the state" and decrees against mass settlement were issued by the Ottoman government in 1884, 1887 and 1888. Significant numbers of Jews began making Aliyah to the Holy Land in 1882 to build collective farms and eventually established the suburb of Tel Aviv in 1909, which became a city in 1921. After counting only 7.000 in 1700 the total number of Jews in Palestine had grown by 1900 to about 60,000 (out of a total population of 500,000), which shows in Karpat's view that "the Ottoman policy of allowing individuals to immigrate and to settle, but prohibiting large groups from doing the same, was successful".

Ottoman rule over the region lasted until the Great War (World War I) when the Ottomans sided with Germany and the Central Powers. During World War I, the Ottomans were driven from much of the area by the United Kingdom during the dissolution of the Ottoman Empire. As the Empire ended, the number of Jews in Palestine had declined to 55,000.

The 19th and 20th centuries

In European usage up to World War I, "Palestine" was used informally for a region 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 various European sources, the eastern boundary was placed anywhere from the Jordan River to slightly east of Amman. The Negev Desert was not included.

Under the Sykes-Picot Agreement of 1916, it was envisioned that most of Palestine, when freed from Ottoman control, would become an international zone not under direct French or British colonial control. Shortly thereafter, British foreign minister Arthur Balfour issued the Balfour Declaration of 1917, which laid plans for a Jewish homeland to be established in Palestine eventually.

The British-led Egyptian Expeditionary Force, commanded by Edmund Allenby, captured Jerusalem on 9 December, 1917 and occupied the whole of the Levant following the defeat of Turkish forces in Palestine at the Battle of Megiddo in September 1918.

British Mandate (1920-1948)

Main article: British Mandate of Palestine

File:BritishMandatePalestine1920.jpg

Cisjordan and Transjordan were incorporated (under different legal and administrative arrangements) into the Mandate for Palestine issued by the League of Nations to Great Britain on 29 September, 1923.

Formal use of the English word "Palestine" returned with the British Mandate. At the beginning of this period, the name "Eretz Yisrael" ("Land of Israel", Hebrew: ארץ ישראל) was inserted into use on a 1920 Postage Stamp by Herbert Samuel, the first British high-commissioner of Palestine 1920-1925. Foreign office officials questioned his action, but the issue was forgotten as responsibility for Palestine was passed from the foreign office to colonial office.

In April 1920 the Allied Supreme Council (the USA, Great Britain, France, Italy and Japan) met at Sanremo and formal decisions were taken on the allocation of mandate territories. The United Kingdom accepted a mandate for Palestine, but the boundaries of the mandate and the conditions under which it was to be held were not decided. The Zionist Organization's representative at Sanremo, Chaim Weizmann, subsequently reported to his colleagues in London:

"There are still important details outstanding, such as the actual terms of the mandate and the question of the boundaries in Palestine. There is the delimitation of the boundary between French Syria and Palestine, which will constitute the northern frontier and the eastern line of demarcation, adjoining Arab Syria. The latter is not likely to be fixed until the Emir Feisal attends the Peace Conference, probably in Paris."

In July 1920, the French drove Faisal bin Husayn from Damascus ending his already negligible control over the region of Transjordan, where local chiefs traditionally resisted any central authority. The sheikhs, who had earlier pledged their loyalty to the Sharif, asked the British to undertake the region's administration. Herbert Samuel asked for the extension of the Palestine government's authority to Transjordan, but at meetings in Cairo and Jerusalem between Winston Churchill and Emir Abdullah in March 1921 it was agreed that Abdullah would administer the territory (initially for six months only) on behalf of the Palestine administration. In the summer of 1921 Transjordan was included within the Mandate, but excluded from the provisions for a Jewish National Home. On 24 July, 1922 the League of Nations approved the terms of the British Mandate over Palestine and Transjordan. On 16 September the League formally approved a memorandum from Lord Balfour confirming the exemption of Transjordan from the clauses of the mandate concerning the creation of a Jewish national home and from the mandate's responsibility to facilitate Jewish immigration and land settlement. In reality, the British prevented Jews from settling in Transjordan, while Arabs could freely settle in Palestine. (See Entry of Jews into Transjordan). Transjordan was essentially 77% of Palestine so this was viewed as a great injustice and huge division of the territory designated for the Jewish National Home by the Balfour Declaration according to the Jewish leaders.

The award of the mandates was delayed as a result of the United States' suspicions regarding Britain's colonial ambitions and similar reservations held by Italy about France's intentions. France in turn refused to reach a settlement over Palestine until its own mandate in Syria became final. According to Louis,

Together with the American protests against the issuance of mandates these triangular quarrels between the Italians, French, and British explain why the A mandates did not come into force until nearly four years after the signing of the Peace Treaty.... The British documents clearly reveal that Balfour's patient and skilful diplomacy contributed greatly to the final issuance of the A mandates for Syria and Palestine on September 29, 1923.

Even before the Mandate came into legal effect in 1923 (text), British terminology sometimes used '"Palestine" for the part west of the Jordan River and "Trans-Jordan" (or Transjordania) for the part east of the Jordan River. However, "Palestine" in the sense of the Jewish National Home often included lands on the both sides of the Jordan River (see also Faisal-Weizmann Agreement, History of Palestine, History of Jordan).

A stamp from Palestine under the British Mandate

In the years following World War II, Britain's position in Palestine gradually worsened. This was caused by a combination of factors, including:

• The situation in Palestine itself rapidly deteriorated, due to the incessant attacks by Irgun and Lehi on British officials, armed forces, and strategic installations. This caused severe damage to British morale and prestige, as well as increasing opposition to the mandate in Britain itself, public opinion demanding to "bring the boys home".
• World public opinion turned against Britain as a result of the British policy of preventing the Jewish Holocaust survivors from reaching Palestine, sending them instead to refugee camps in Cyprus, or even back to Germany, as in the case of Exodus 1947.
• The costs of maintaining an army of over 100,000 men in Palestine weighed heavily on a British economy suffering from post-war depression, and was another cause for British public opinion to demand an end to the Mandate.

Finally in early 1947 the British Government announced their desire to terminate the Mandate, and passed the responsibility over Palestine to the United Nations.

UN Partition

Main article: 1947 UN Partition Plan

UN Partition Plan

Map of the State of Israel today

On 29 November 1947, the United Nations General Assembly, with a two-thirds majority international vote, passed the United Nations Partition Plan for Palestine (United Nations General Assembly Resolution 181), a plan to resolve the Arab-Jewish conflict by partitioning the territory into separate Jewish and Arab states, with the Greater Jerusalem area (encompassing Bethlehem) coming under international control. Jewish leaders (including the Jewish Agency), accepted the plan, while Palestinian Arab leaders rejected it and refused to negotiate. Neighboring Arab and Muslim states also rejected the partition plan. The Arab community reacted violently after the Arab Higher Committee declared a strike and burned many buildings and shops. As armed skirmishes between Arab and Jewish paramilitary forces in Palestine continued, the British mandate ended on May 15, 1948, the establishment of the State of Israel having been proclaimed the day before (see Declaration of the Establishment of the State of Israel). The neighboring Arab states and armies (Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, Egypt, Transjordan, Holy War Army, Arab Liberation Army, and local Arabs) immediately attacked Israel following its declaration of independence, and the 1948 Arab-Israeli War ensued. Consequently, the partition plan was never implemented.

Current status

Following the 1948 Arab-Israeli War, the 1949 Armistice Agreements between Israel and neighboring Arab states eliminated Palestine as a distinct territory. It was divided between Israel, Egypt, Syria and Jordan.

In addition to the UN-partitioned area, Israel captured 26% of the Mandate territory west of the Jordan river. Jordan captured and annexed about 21% of the Mandate territory. Jerusalem was divided, with Jordan taking the eastern parts, including the old city, and Israel taking the western parts. The Gaza Strip was captured by Egypt.

For a description of the massive population movements, Arab and Jewish, at the time of the 1948 war and over the following decades, see Palestinian exodus and Jewish exodus from Arab lands.

From the 1960s onward, the term "Palestine" was regularly used in political contexts. Various declarations, such as the 1988 proclamation of a State of Palestine by the PLO referred to a country called Palestine, defining its borders with differing degrees of clarity, including the annexation of the whole of the State of Israel. Most recently, the Palestine draft constitution refers to borders based on the West Bank and Gaza Strip prior to the 1967 Six-Day War. This so-called Green Line follows the 1949 armistice line; the permanent borders are yet to be negotiated. Furthermore, since 1994, there has been a Palestinian Authority controlling varying portions of historic Palestine.

The Origins and Evolution of the Palestine Problem:1917-1988

The question of Palestine was brought before the United Nations shortly after the end of the Second World War.

The origins of the Palestine problem as an international issue, however, lie in events occurring towards the end of the First World War. These events led to a League of Nations decision to place Palestine under the administration of Great Britain as the Mandatory Power under the Mandates System adopted by the League. In principle, the Mandate was meant to be in the nature of a transitory phase until Palestine attained the status of a fully independent nation, a status provisionally recognized in the League's Covenant, but in fact the Mandate's historical evolution did not result in the emergence of Palestine as an independent nation.

The decision on the Mandate did not take into account the wishes of the people of Palestine, both Arabs and Jews, despite the Covenant's requirements that "the wishes of these communities must be a principal consideration in the selection of the Mandatory". This assumed special significance because, almost five years before receiving the mandate from the League of Nations, the British Government had given commitments to the Zionist Organization regarding the establishment of a Jewish national home in Palestine, for which Zionist leaders had pressed a claim of historical connection since their ancestors had lived in Palestine two thousand years earlier before dispersing in the Diaspora.

During the period of the Mandate, the Zionist Organization worked to secure the establishment of a Jewish national home in Palestine, where both Jews and Arabs could live side by side. The Arab people of Palestine felt this design to be a violation of their rights. They also viewed it as an infringement of assurances of independence given by the Allied Powers to Arab leaders in return for their support during the war. The result was mounting resistance to the Mandate by all Arabs, followed by Arab violence against the Jewish population.

Demographics

Early demographics

Estimating the population of Palestine in antiquity relies on 3 methods - censuses and writings made at the times, biblical associations, and the scientific method based on excavations and statistical methods that consider the number of settlements at the particular age, area of each settlement, density factor for each settelment.

According to Joseph Jacobs, writing in the Jewish Encyclopedia (1901-1906) [3], the Pentateuch contains a number of statements as to the number of Jews that left Egypt, the descendants of the seventy sons and grandsons of Jacob who took up their residence in that country. Altogether, including Levites, there were 611,730 males over twenty years of age, and therefore capable of bearing arms; this would imply a population of about 3,154,000. The Census of David is said to have recorded 1,300,000 males over twenty years of age, which would imply a population of over 5,000,000. The number of exiles who returned from Babylon is given at 42,360. Tacitus declares that Jerusalem at its fall contained 600,000 persons; Josephus, that there were as many as 1,100,000.

According to excavational studies by Magen Borshi of The Israel Museum in Jerusalem:

"We have sought here to demonstrate in two alternate, independent ways that the population of Palestine in antiquity did not exceed a million persons. It can also be shown, moreover, that this was more or less the size of the population in the peak period--the late Byzantine period, around A.D. 600"

Similarly, a study by Yigal Shiloh of The Hebrew University suggests that the population of Palestine in the Iron Age could have never exceeded a million. He writes:

"As we have seen above, the population of the country in the Roman-Byzantine period greatly exceeded that in the Iron Age...If we accept Broshi's population estimates, which appear to be confirmed by the results of recent research, it follows that the estimates for the population during the Iron Age must be set at a lower figure."

Shmuel Katz writes:

"When Jewish independence came to an end in the year 70, the population numbered, at a conservative estimate, some 5 million people. (By Josephus' figures, there were nearer 7 million.) Even sixty years after the destruction of the Temple, at the outbreak of the revolt led by Bar Kochba in 132, when large numbers had fled or been deported, the Jewish population of the country must have numbered at least 3 million, according to Dio Cassius’ figures. Sixteen centuries later, when the practical possibility of the return to Zion appeared on the horizon, Palestine was a denuded, derelict, and depopulated country. The writings of travellers who visited Palestine in the late eighteenth and throughout the nineteenth century are filled with descriptions of its emptiness, its desolation. In 1738, Thomas Shaw wrote of the absence of people to fill - Palestine's fertile soil. In 1785, Constantine Francois Volney described the "rained" and "desolate" country. He had not seen the worst. Pilgrims and travellers continued to report in heartrending terms on its condition. Almost sixty years later, Alexander Keith, recalling Volney's description, wrote: "In his day the land had not fully reached its last degree of desolation and depopulation."

Demographics in the late Ottoman and British Mandate periods

By Volney's estimates in 1785, there were no more than 200,000 people in the country.

According to Justin McCarthy, the population of Palestine in the early 19th century was 350,000 and in 1900 Palestine (according to Ottoman statistics) had a population of about 600,000 of which 94% were Arabs. In 1914 Palestine had a population of 657,000 Muslim Arabs, 81,000 Christian Arabs, and 59,000 Jews.

Alphonse de Lamartine in 1835:

"Outside the gates of Jerusalem we saw indeed no living object, heard no living sound, we found the same void, the same silence ... as we should have expected before the entombed gates of Pompeii or Herculaneam a complete eternal silence reigns in the town, on the highways, in the country ... the tomb of a whole people."

Mark Twain visited Palestine in 1867 and wrote in Innocents Abroad "what he saw as he travelled the length of the Desolate country":

"From Athens all through the islands of the Grecian Archipelago, we saw little but forbidden sea-walls and barren hills, sometimes surmounted by three or four graceful columns of some ancient temples, lonely and deserted---a fitting symbol of desolation that has come upon all Greece in these latter ages. We saw no plowed fields, very few villages, no trees or grass or vegetation of any kind, scarcely, and hardly ever an isolated house. Greece is a bleak, unsmiling desert, without agriculture, manufactures, or commerce, apparently." (The Innocents Abroad, p. 203) ... "Palestine sits in sackcloth and ashes. Over it broods the spell of a curse that has withered its fields and fettered its energies. Palestine is desolate and unlovely -- Palestine is no more of this workday world. It is sacred to poetry and tradition, it is dreamland." "There was hardly a tree or a shrub anywhere. Even the olive and the cactus, those fast friends of a worthless soil, had almost deserted the country". "A desolation is here that not even imagination can grace with the pomp of life and action. We reached Tabor safely. We never saw a human being on the whole route". ... "Damascus is beautiful from the mountain. It is beautiful even to foreigners accustomed to luxuriant vegetation, and I can easily understand how unspeakably beautiful it must be to eyes that are only used to the God-forsaken barrenness and desolation of Syria. I should think a Syrian would go wild with ecstasy when such a picture bursts upon him for the first time." (The Innocents Abroad, p. 262)

So overwhelming was Twain's impression of an irreversible desolation that he came to the grim conclusion that Palestine would never come to life again.

Kathleen Christison was critical of Twain and said that in Nablus the city had a population of 20,000 Arabs and a few hundred Samaritans yet Twain described the Samaritans at length without mentioning the Arabs at all.

In the middle of the nineteenth century, one estimate of the population for the whole of Palestine was between 50,000 and 100,000 people. In a census in the late 19th century, the population of Palestine was over 230,000. Kemal Karpat claims that at this time it was one of the more populated regions of the Ottoman empire.

After a visit to Palestine in 1891, Ahad Ha'am wrote:

From abroad, we are accustomed to believe that Eretz Israel is presently almost totally desolate, an uncultivated desert, and that anyone wishing to buy land there can come and buy all he wants. But in truth it is not so. In the entire land, it is hard to find tillable land that is not already tilled; only sandy fields or stony hills, suitable at best for planting trees or vines and, even that after considerable work and expense in clearing and preparing them- only these remain unworked. ... Many of our people who came to buy land have been in Eretz Israel for months, and have toured its length and width, without finding what they seek.

By 1948, the population had risen to 1,900,000, of whom 68% were Arabs, and 32% were Jews (UNSCOP report, including bedouin).

Genetic analyses of the populations of the region

File:Y-chromosome haplotype.jpg

Regions of the Y chromosome used in staining

According to various genetic studies, Jewish populations and Palestinian populations do overlap genetically. Palestinian Muslims additionally have genetic components that are found in the population of the Arabian Peninsula, but are rare in Jews. Ashkenazi Jews also carry components found in European populations, but are rare in Arabs.

Geneticists generally agree there was mixing in Middle East populations in prehistoric times. Nebel et al. (2000) doing Y-chromosome haplotype analysis for patrilineal ancestry of Jews and Palestinian Muslims "revealed a common gene pool for a large portion of Y chromosomes, suggesting a relatively recent common ancestry". The two modal haplotypes that comprise the Palestinian Arab clade were very infrequent among Jews, "reflecting divergence and/or admixture from other populations". Nebel et al. regard their findings in good agreement with historical evidence that suggest that "Part, or perhaps the majority, of the Muslim Arabs in this country descended from local inhabitants, mainly Christians and Jews, who had converted after the Islamic conquest in the seventh century AD... These local inhabitants, in turn, were descendants of the core population that had lived in the area for several centuries, some even since prehistoric times.

A subsequent study aimed at determining the genetic relationship among three Jewish communities (Ashkenazi, Sephardic, and Kurdish) by the same group described two Y-chromosomal haplotype groups, Eu9 and Eu10, that represent a major part of Middle East ancestry. Eu9 appears to originate from the northern Fertile Crescent, while Eu10 appears to come from the southern part of it. Jewish and Muslim Kurdish populations have high-frequency of Eu9 but generally lack Eu10, which is prevalent in Palestinian Muslims. The study proposes that

...the Y chromosomes in Palestinian Arabs and Bedouin represent, to a large extent, early lineages derived from the Neolithic inhabitants of the area and additional lineages from more-recent population movements. The early lineages are part of the common chromosome pool shared with Jews. According to our working model, the more-recent migrations were mostly from the Arabian Peninsula, as is seen in the Arab-specific Eu 10 chromosomes that include the modal haplotypes observed in Palestinians and Bedouin... The study demonstrates that the Y chromosome pool of Jews is an integral part of the genetic landscape of the region and, in particular, that Jews exhibit a high degree of genetic affinity to populations living in the north of the Fertile Crescent.

In 1902, Sir James Frazer, in his book The Golden Bough, which argued his thesis about the origins of religion, speculated that the majority of Palestinian Arabs are descendants of the ancient Jebusites and Canaanites:

"The Arabic-speaking peasants of Palestine are the progeny of the tribes which settled in the country before the Israelite invasion. They are still adhering to the land. They never left it and were never uprooted from it."

Some geneticists agree with Frazer. Arnaiz-Villena, et al. (2001) compared the genetic profile of Palestinians with that of other Mediterranean populations, and argue that::[4]

"Archaeologic and genetic data support [the hypothesis] that both Jews and Palestinians came from the ancient Canaanites, who extensively mixed with Egyptians, Mesopotamian and Anatolian peoples in ancient times."

However, the study also says that Palestinians are closely related to Egyptians, Lebanese, Iranians, Cretans, Macedonians and Sardinians, Turks, Armenians and also to Algerians, Spaniards, French, Italians and Basques. It therefore doesn't answer the question of immigration.

Arnaiz-Villena was later sacked from the journal's editorial board and the article retracted[5]. The journal claimed the article was politically biased and was written using inappropriate remarks about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

The question of late Arab immigration to Palestine

Whether there was significant Arab immigration into Palestine after the beginning of Jewish settlement there in the late 19th century has been a matter of some controversy.

Demographer Uziel Schmelz, in his analysis of Ottoman registration data for 1905 populations of Jerusalem and Hebron kazas, found that most Ottoman citizens living in these areas, comprising about one quarter of the population of Palestine, were living at the place where they were born. Specifically, of Muslims, 93.1% were born in their current locality of residence, 5.2% were born elsewhere in Palestine, and 1.6% were born outside Palestine. Of Christians, 93.4% were born in their current locality, 3.0% were born elsewhere in Palestine, and 3.6% were born outside Palestine. Of Jews (excluding the large fraction who were not Ottoman citizens), 59.0% were born in their current locality, 1.9% were born elsewhere in Palestine, and 39.0% were born outside Palestine.

Professor Joseph Kickasola of international affairs talks about the Palestine region being sparsely populated before the immigration. One of the reasons could have been the apparent lack of oil in the region. He also mentions the abundant existence of swamps and malaria. Historians note that the Zionist settlers drained the swamps and eradicated the deadly malaria. [6]

American economist Gottheil considers that there was significant Arab immigration:

There is every reason to believe that consequential immigration of Arabs into and within Palestine occurred during the Ottoman and British mandatory periods. Among the most compelling arguments in support of such immigration is the universally acknowledged and practiced linkage between regional economic disparities and migratory impulses. The precise magnitude of Arab immigration into and within Palestine is, as Bachi noted, unknown. Lack of completeness in Ottoman registration lists and British Mandatory censuses, and the immeasurable illegal, unreported, and undetected immigration during both periods make any estimate a bold venture into creative analysis. In most cases, those venturing into the realm of Palestinian demography—or other demographic analyses based on very crude data—acknowledge its limitations and the tentativeness of the conclusions that may be drawn.

Yehoshua Porath believes that the notion of "large-scale immigration of Arabs from the neighboring countries" is a myth "proposed by Zionist writers". He writes:

As all the research by historians and geographers of modern Palestine shows, the Arab population began to grow again in the middle of the nineteenth century. That growth resulted from a new factor: the demographic revolution. Until the 1850s there was no "natural" increase of the population, but this began to change when modern medical treatment was introduced and modern hospitals were established, both by the Ottoman authorities and by the foreign Christian missionaries. The number of births remained steady but infant mortality decreased. This was the main reason for Arab population growth. ... No one would doubt that some migrant workers came to Palestine from Syria and Trans-Jordan and remained there. But one has to add to this that there were migrations in the opposite direction as well. For example, a tradition developed in Hebron to go to study and work in Cairo, with the result that a permanent community of Hebronites had been living in Cairo since the fifteenth century. Trans-Jordan exported unskilled casual labor to Palestine; but before 1948 its civil service attracted a good many educated Palestinian Arabs who did not find work in Palestine itself. Demographically speaking, however, neither movement of population was significant in comparison to the decisive factor of natural increase.

Daniel Pipes responds to Porath by saying that the argument that "substantial immigration of Arabs to Palestine took place during the first half of the twentieth century is supported by an array of demographic statistics and contemporary accounts, the bulk of which have not been questioned by anyone, including Professor Porath." [7]

Current demographics

See also: Demographics of Israel, Demographics of the Palestinian territories, and Demographics of Jordan

According to Israel's Central Bureau of Statistics, as of May 2006, of Israel's 7 million people, 77% were Jews, 18.5% Arabs, and 4.3% "others". Among Jews, 68% were Sabras (Israeli-born), mostly second- or third-generation Israelis, and the rest are olim — 22% from Europe and the Americas, and 10% from Asia and Africa, including the Arab countries.

According to Palestinian evaluations, The West Bank is inhabited by approximately 2.4 million Palestinians. According to a study presented at The Sixth Herzliya Conference on The Balance of Israel’s National Security there are 1.4 million Palestinians. According to Palestinian estimates, there are another 1.4 million Palestinians in the Gaza Strip.

According to these Israeli and Palestinian estimates, the population in the region of Palestine stands at 9.8 - 10.8 millions.

According to Jordanian statistics, there are almost 6 million inhabitants in Jordan, the majority of them being Palestinians but exact Palestinian percentage in the society is disputed and not encouraged to be researched by the government. Estimates are between 45 - 90 %.

See also

• Palestinian people
• History of Palestine
• State of Palestine
• Names of the Levant
• Land of Israel covers roughly the same region, with a different focus
• State of Israel
• Mandate for Palestine
• Israeli-Palestinian conflict
• Arab-Israeli conflict
• Greater Israel
• Greater Syria
• Conflict: Middle East Political Simulator

External links

• The Hope Simpson Report (London, 1930) [8]
• Palestine Royal Commission Report (the Peel Report) (London, 1937) [9]
• Report to the Council of the League of Nations (1928) [10]
• Report to the Council of the League of Nations (1929) [11]
• Report to the Council of the League of Nations (1934) [12]
• Report to the Council of the League of Nations (1935) [13]
• www.mideastweb.org - A website with a wealth of statistics regarding population in Palestine
• Coins and Banknotes of Palestine under the British Mandate
• WorldStatesmen- Maps, flags, chronology, see Israel and Palestinian National Authority

Maps

• Sykes-Picot Agreement, 1916
• 1947 UN Partition Plan
• 1949 Armisitice Lines
• Israel After 1949 Armistice Agreements

Bibliography

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• Bachi, Roberto (1974), The Population of Israel, Jerusalem: Institute of Contemporary Jewry, Hebrew University
• Biger, Gideon (1981). Where was Palestine? Pre-World War I perception, AREA (Journal of the Institute of British Geographers) Vol 13, No. 2, pp. 153-160.
• Broshi, Magen (1979). The Population of Western Palestine in the Roman-Byzantine Period, Bulletin of the American Schools of Oriental Research, No. 236, p.7, 1979.
• Doumani, Beshara (1995). Rediscovering Palestine: Merchants and Peasants in Jabal Nablus 1700-1900. UC Press. ISBN 0-520-20370-4
• Gelber, Yoav (1997). Jewish-Transjordanian Relations 1921-48: Alliance of Bars Sinister. London: Routledge. ISBN 0-7146-4675-X
• Gerber, Haim (1998). "Palestine" and other territorial concepts in the 17th century, International Journal of Middle East Studies, Vol 30, pp. 563-572.
• Gilbar, Gar G. (ed.), Ottoman Palestine: 1800-1914. Leiden: Brill. ISBN 90-04-07785-5
• Gottheil, Fred M. (2003) The Smoking Gun: Arab Immigration into Palestine, 1922-1931, Middle East Quarterly, X(1).
• Hughes, Mark (1999). Allenby and British Strategy in the Middle East, 1917-1919. London: Routledge. ISBN 0-7146-4920-1
• Ingrams, Doreen (1972). Palestine Papers 1917-1922. London: John Murray. ISBN 0-8076-0648-0
• Khalidi, Rashid (1997). Palestinian Identity. The Construction of Modern National Consciousness. Columbia University Press. ISBN 0-231-10515-0
• Karpat, Kemal H. (2002). Studies on Ottoman Social and Political History. Brill. ISBN 90-04-12101-3
• Katz, Shmuel (1973) Battleground: Fact and Fantasy in Palestine Shapolsky Pub; ISBN 0933503032
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• Le Strange, Guy (1965). Palestine under the Moslems (Originally published in 1890; reprinted by Khayats) ISBN 0-404-56288-4
• J.P. Loftus (1948), Features of the demography of Palestine, Population Studies, Vol 2
• Louis, Wm. Roger (1969). The United Kingdom and the Beginning of the Mandates System, 1919-1922. International Organization, 23(1), pp. 73-96.
• McCarthy, Justin (1990). The Population of Palestine. Columbia University Press. ISBN 0-231-07110-8.
• Mandel, Neville J. (1976). The Arabs and Zionism Before World War I. University of California Press. ISBN 0-520-02466-4
• Maniscalco, Fabio. (2005). Protection, conservation and valorisation of Palestinian Cultural Patrimony Massa Publisher. ISBN 88-87835-62-4.
• Metzer, Jacob (1988), The divided economy of Mandatory Palestine, Cambridge University Press
• Porath, Yehoshua (1974). The Emergence of the Palestinian-Arab National Movement, 1918-1929. London: Frank Cass. ISBN 0-7146-2939-1
• Rogan, Eugene L. (2002). Frontiers of the State in the Late Ottoman Empire: Transjordan, 1850-1921. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0-521-89223-6.
• Schlor, Joachim (1999). Tel Aviv: From Dream to City. Reaktion Books. ISBN 1-86189-033-8
• Shahin, Mariam (2005). Palestine: A Guide, Interlink Books. ISBN 1-56656-557-X
• Schmelz, Uziel O. (1990) Population characteristics of Jerusalem and Hebron regions according to Ottoman Census of 1905, in
• Shiloh, Yigal (1980). The Population of Iron Age Palestine in the Light of a Sample Analysis of Urban Plans, Areas, and Population Density, Bulletin of the American Schools of Oriental Research, No. 239, p.33, 1980.
• Sicker, Martin (1999). Reshaping Palestine: From Muhammad Ali to the British Mandate, 1831-1922. Praeger/Greenwood. ISBN 0-275-96639-9
• Twain , Mark (1867). Innocents Abroad. Penguin Classics. ISBN 0-142-43708-5
• UNSCOP Report to the General Assembly
• Westermann, Großer Atlas zur Weltgeschichte. ISBN 3-07-509520-6