I have a friend who specializes in asking mindbogglingly simple questions.  A few months ago he asked me a question so basic it stalled my mind...

  "I keep hearing about Palestine...", he said, "...but I can't find it on a map.  Where the hell is Palestine?"

  He isn't a scholar but is smart and well informed...

  1. Where, exactly, is Palestine?
 
  2. What, exactly, are Palestinians?

  3. Exactly what countries make up the Middle East?

  4. Are they all Arabs?

  5. Are they all opposed to Israel?

  6. Do the Arabs really "deny Israel's existence"?

  7. What does "denying Israel's existence" mean?

  8. Where did Palestinians come from?

  9. Who created Israel?

  10. Who owns the occupied territories?

  I guess the real question isn't where is Palestine, but when is Palestine...

  Friends, tell me what this mess is all about.  I still think a core issue is water rights but I seem to be alone in that opinion...

  groove ;) on all...

Palestine before history...

  If there's a way of saying this without offending anybody, I can't think of it, so I'll just say it.  As a book of religion, the Old Testament is fine.  As a highly mythologized history of Judaism's origin, the OT is wonderful.  But as a history of the non-Jewish peoples of the Middle East, the OT is like a 2000 year long Polish joke...

  The OT does a racist hatchet-job on some of the greatest, most influential civilizations the world has ever known...

  As Jews know better than any people on earth, one man's holy book is another man's death sentence...

  I'm sure we can all benefit from understanding the truth about the ancient Middle East...

  go ;)...

"Palestine" is a very misleading name.

The name actually is descended from the name of the people in the Bible that lived in the region, the "Philistines".  Most students of archaeology know of them better as the Phonecians.  It overall was a rather broad-based label, being akin to "Barbarian".  Anybody who did not belong to Israel and lived in the region was a Philistine.

The name became known in it's modern connotation during the Ottoman empire.  Philistine was the name of a Military District, and anybody who lived there was a Philistine, be they Jew, Muslim, or Christian.  It was considered to be a backwards province, with no self-determination.  And it was considered seperate from other regions like Saudi Arabia, Persia, and Trans-Jordan in that it did not have it's own "traditional" royal family or leaders.  The majority of the population were transient herdsmen, or lived in towns like Jerusalem which were under military control.

When the Ottoman Empire was broken up, the name "Palestine" stuck.  It covered the area of the old Military District, and was largely an amalgum of people who left the other areas that had once been part of the Turkish Empire.  It was frequently the place where tribal leaders in Saudi Arabia were deposed, because it let them keep some form of power, and Saudi Arabia was not interested in following them, as long as they left.  A lot of former leaders in other Gulf Nations also went into exile in "Palestine".

The name never meant anything other then the people who lived there at the time.  And since most of the people were nomadic, that frequently changed.  And the land itself was simply a district under Military Controll, which nobody else wanted.  When the region was partitioned up after World War I, Palestine was the leftover that neither Saudi Arabia, Syria, Lebanon, or Trans-Jordan wanted.  There was little good farmland, no oil, and little water available.

"Palestine" is a very misleading name.

The name actually is descended from the name of the people in the Bible that lived in the region, the "Philistines".  Most students of archaeology know of them better as the Phonecians.  It overall was a rather broad-based label, being akin to "Barbarian".  Anybody who did not belong to Israel and lived in the region was a Philistine.



  The earliest settlers of the Middle East, the ancestors of what we would call Arabs, first settled in and around Iraq, Iran and Turkey in the New Stone Age, roughly 12,000 years ago...

  Early on, the area known as Palestine has since been ruled, to some extent and in one form or another by Natufians, Ghassulians (from Syria), Sumerians, Amorites, Babylonians and Egyptians.  The Semites are a group of peoples who spoke languages similar to modern Arabic and Hebrew.  From the earliest days, the Semites had settled in Sumer and mixed with the Sumerians...

  Semite: One of a people of Caucasian stock comprising, chiefly, Jews and Arabs, but in ancient times included Phoenicians, Babylonians, Assyrians and other peoples of the East Mediterrenean...

  The Philistines, you refer to, are Greek in lineage and shared in the general collapse of Mediterranean civilization which took place in the 1200's B.C.  Greek shippers turned to piracy and war climaxing in the so-called Trojan War which ruined most of Greece.  Whole tribes, including the Philistines, took to the sea...

  The only Jewish countries, as far as I can tell, that existed in the ME (until the UN Resolution 181, of course), was a united kingdom that lasted for 98 years (1020 B.C. - 922 B.C.) which was split into two kingdoms following a popular revolt: Israel Northern Kingdom which lasted for 200 years (922 B.C. - 722 B.C.) and Judah Southern Kingdom which lasted for 336 years (922 B.C. - 586 B.C.)...

 

Well, Jerry Fallwell says there's no such thing as Palestinians, Palestine, or the Gaza Strip, so that's good'nuff for me!

After WW II European Jews understandably wanted a nation of their own, and since Judeism has roots in Jeruselem and its surroundings, wanted it to be there.  Their motto was "a land without people, a people without a land".  And so the UN createed Isreal and the natives of the region were gradually marginalized, uprooted, and displaced.  Whenever the western nations have mucked about in West Asia they have sxcrewed things up royally.  This is no exception.

    The only Jewish countries, as far as I can tell, that existed in the ME (until the UN Resolution 181, of course), was a united kingdom that lasted for 98 years (1020 B.C. - 922 B.C.) which was split into two kingdoms following a popular revolt: Israel Northern Kingdom which lasted for 200 years (922 B.C. - 722 B.C.) and Judah Southern Kingdom which lasted for 336 years (922 B.C. - 586 B.C.)...

And don't forget the independent Jewish kingdom that was established there  in 165 BC when the Maccabees overthrew the land's Seleucid rulers. The kingdom lasted for just over a century before being conquered by the Romans in 63 BC:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maccabee
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hasmonean

And don't forget the independent Jewish kingdom that was established there  in 165 BC when the Maccabees overthrew the land's Seleucid rulers. The kingdom lasted for just over a century when it was conquered by the Romans in 63 BC:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maccabee
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hasmonean


  Yes sir, quite right...

  Judah the Maccabee followed by John Hyrcanus son of the Great Jannaeus Alexander, the victor in the squabble with his brother, Arisobulus.  The Maccabee/Hasmonean era remains a little fuzzy for me.  Thanks for pointing this out...

  Perhaps, also, the short lived (2

After WW II European Jews understandably wanted a nation of their own, and since Judeism has roots in Jeruselem and its surroundings, wanted it to be there.  Their motto was "a land without people, a people without a land".  And so the UN createed Isreal and the natives of the region were gradually marginalized, uprooted, and displaced.  Whenever the western nations have mucked about in West Asia they have sxcrewed things up royally.  This is no exception.


  Yeah, and this brings me back to Teodor Herzl's famous book The Jewish State (1896), four hypothesis were at the basis for Herzl's Zionism:

  1. The existence of a Jewish people
  2.The impossibility of assimilation into the societies in which Jews live
  3. The Jewish people's right to the Promised Land
  4. The non-existence in this (Promised) land of another people, who also had rights

  One doesn't have to be Einstein to notice that number four might turn out to be just a little bit of a problem...

  Zionists knew from day one that the weakest link in their plan to turn Palestine into Israel was tapdancing around the fact that Palestine was already someone else's homeland groove ;) on...

  Yoikes..!  I'm going way off the road, here... :-\\

Who are the Brain Police?

   1. Where, exactly, is Palestine?

   http://img.villagephotos.com/p/2006-6/1193336/PalestineMap.jpg

   Palestine in 1945 showing land ownership: Jewish (Red)/Arab (Green)/Other...

   Right-clickky to open piccy larger for more detail groove ;) on...

Am I the only one who wonders why,,, at the end of a Seder supper, for centuries the closing is, and has been, "Next year in Palestine", then when Palestine became a Zionist state they changed the name to Israel.  I went to a Seder a couple of years ago and still the closing was "Next Year in Palestine". 

Am I the only one who wonders why,,, at the end of a Seder supper, for centuries the closing is, and has been, "Next year in Palestine", then when Palestine became a Zionist state they changed the name to Israel.  I went to a Seder a couple of years ago and still the closing was "Next Year in Palestine". 

Pardon my ignorance here, but to what does "Next Year in Palestine" refer?
???

Pardon my ignorance here, but to what does "Next Year in Palestine" refer?
???


It is in reference to the Jewish people being cast out of Isreal.  The twelve tribes scattered, "Next Year in Palestine" refers to the return of the peoples to the holy land, to claim as their own.

Am I the only one who wonders why,,, at the end of a Seder supper, for centuries the closing is, and has been, "Next year in Palestine", then when Palestine became a Zionist state they changed the name to Israel.  I went to a Seder a couple of years ago and still the closing was "Next Year in Palestine". 


  I think, with disclaimer, the reference to Palestine in the Seder is merely long-standing oral tradition and has less to do with political boundaries than with a general reference to the coastal region of the eastern Mediterranean.  Sort of like a California resident saying, "Next year in the Bay Area" while not specifically, "San Francisco" or "Contra Costa County" or "Alameda" groove ;) on...

   2. What, exactly, are Palestinians?

  ~Antiquity
  The Greek term Palaestina (Παλαιστινη - first used by Herodotus) is itself derived ultimately from the name of the Philistines (Filasteeni), as Mushroom pointed out, which was a common adjectival noun adopted by natives of the region...

  ~Modern
  Under the British mandate period from 1918 to 1948, the term "Palestinian" referred to anyone native to Palestine, whatever their religion; Muslim, Christian, Jew, or Druze groove ;) on...