Palestine is a name coined by the Romans around 135 CE from the name of a seagoing Aegean people who settled on the coast of Canaan in antiquity – the Philistines. The name was chosen to replace Judea, as a sign that Jewish sovereignty had been eradicated following the Jewish Revolts against Rome.
In the course of time, the Latin name Philistia was further bastardized into Palistina or Palestine. During the next 2,000 years Palestine was never an independent state belonging to any people, nor did a Palestinian people distinct from other Arabs appear during 1,300 years of Muslim hegemony in Palestine under Arab and Ottoman rule. During that rule, local Arabs were actually considered part of, and subject to, the authority of Greater Syria (Suriyya al-Kubra).
Historically, before the Arabs fabricated the concept of Palestinian peoplehood as an exclusively Arab phenomenon, no such group existed. This is substantiated in countless official British Mandate-vintage documents that speak of the Jews and the Arabs of Palestine – not Jews and Palestinians.
In fact, before local Jews began calling themselves Israelis in 1948 (when the name “Israel” was chosen for the newly-established Jewish State), the term “Palestine” applied almost exclusively to Jews and the institutions founded by new Jewish immigrants in the first half of the 20th century, before the state’s independence.
Some examples include:
- The Jerusalem Post, founded in 1932, was called The Palestine Post until 1948.
- Bank Leumi L’Israel, incorporated in 1902, was called the Anglo-Palestine Company until 1948.
- The Jewish Agency, an arm of the Zionist movement engaged in Jewish settlement since 1929, was initially called the Jewish Agency for Palestine.
- Today’s Israel Philharmonic Orchestra, founded in 1936 by German Jewish refugees who fled Nazi Germany, was originally called the Palestine Symphony Orchestra, composed of some 70 Palestinian Jews.
- The United Jewish Appeal (UJA) was established in 1939 as a merger of the United Palestine Appeal and the fund-raising arm of the Joint Distribution Committee.
?Arabs are not satisfied with one Palestinian political entity (Jordan) where they are the uncontested majority and have the political machinery and the territory for self-determination. Instead, they want an additional state because twenty-one Arab states are not enough (and one Jewish state is one too many).
Many Catholic and Christian Bibles refer maps of “Palestine at the time of Jesus”, ignoring the fact that there was no Palestine at the time of Jesus and that it was called “Israel”.
Metternich the Austrian Chancellor for most of 1812 – 1848 once dismissed the case for a unified Italy and Italian nationalism with, “Italy is a geographical expression.” He would have said the same about the 1815 – 1870 move to German unification. Suffice for those who have axes to grind with a united Germany that author of their anthem lost his job – for nationalist agitation. Nevertheless both Italy and Germany have emerged as nation states – as did the USA. Palestine might be a post 1967 fake up by the KGB and Arab League but it is the sort of idea that is not possible to re-bottle without a lot of bloodshed.
It could be more effective given Plishtim/ Palestinians/ Falastini and other variants all derive from the shoresh for: intruders/ trespassers/ invaders/ [undesirables and deplorables] to mock them in their claim to descend from the Cana’anites as to why they call themselves after an invading gang of Egyptianised proto-Greek immigrants instead of calling themselves Cana’anites???? or are they afraid to separate too clearly from the Arab Moslem World faked up by the Mecca warlord masquerading as a religious prophet????
Finally both Israelis and Palestine Arabs want each other out of their hair and so the two state solution is the only stable and egalitarian POLITICAL answer but it depends on the economic cooperation and burying the military conflict. The Arab half of the dispute can not be taken seriously while it treats Israel as Metternich treated Italy.