Israel Science and Technology Directory

History of Israel

What is Palestine and Palestinians?

Map of Palestine under British rule
Map of Palestine under the British rule

After the revolt of Bar Kokhba against the Roman Empire (132-135 C.E.), the Judea province was renamed Syria Palaestina by the Roman Emperor Hadrian to detach the Judean province from Jewish identity.

In recent history, the area called Palestine includes the territories of the present-day Israel and Jordan (see the map). From 1517 to 1917 most of this area remained under the rule of the Ottoman Empire.

During World War I, in 1917, the British army occupied Jerusalem. On November 2, 1917, the British foreign secretary Arthur James Balfour issued the Balfour Declaration for "the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people".

The Ottoman Empire was dissolved at the end of World War I in 1918. On April 19, 1920, the San Remo conference convened by four World War I Allied Powers - Britain, France, Italy and Japan - adopted a resolution noting that the Mandate for Palestine will be responsible for carrying out the Balfour Declaration, for the establishment of the Jewish national home.

In 1922 Britain allocated nearly 80% of Palestine to Transjordan. Thus, Jordan covers the majority of the land of Palestine under British Mandate. Jordan also includes the majority of the Arabs who lived there. In other words, Jordan is the Arab portion of Palestine.

In 1923, the modern Republic of Turkey (that is the successor of the Ottoman Empire), signed the Lausanne Treaty agreeing to transfer territories (including Palestine) to the control of the British Empire.

Under the British rule, the residents of Palestine were called "Palestinians". Since Palestine included both modern day Israel and Jordan, both Arab and Jewish residents of this area were referred to as "Palestinians".

It was only after the Jews re-inhabited their historic homeland of Judea and Samaria, after the Six-Day War, that the myth of an Arab Palestinian nation was created and marketed worldwide.

In documents not more than hundred years, the area is described as a scarcely populated region. Jews by far were the majority in Jerusalem over the small Arab minority. Until the Oslo agreement, the major source of income for Arab residents was employment in the Israeli sector. To this day, many Arabs try to migrate into Israel with various deceptions to become a citizen of Israel.

Google’s “Ngram Viewer,” which maps the appearance of unique terms in books from 1800 to the present, documents the Palestinians’ late arrival. A search for “Palestinian state” or “Palestinian people” turns up almost no hits before the late 1960s, when the number shoots upward.

All attempts to claim Arab sovereignty over Israel of today, should be seen with their real intention: The destruction of Israel as a Jewish state and the only bulwark of the Judeo-Christian Western civilization in the Middle East.

Additional Resources:

Documents

Videos

Oslo accords and "Peace Process"

The Oslo "Peace" accords have not brought peace. The number of terror attacks against Israel and the number of Israelis killed by Arab terror bombings greatly escalated after Oslo to a level that has not been seen since 1948 (see statistics). The Palestinian Authority has repeatedly violated all aspects of the agreement (see full report of violations).

Armed violence by the army of Arafat confirm the predictions that this agreement would escalate the conflict rather than subdue it (see article). In the history there are many examples of international "peace agreements" that were rapidly followed by major wars. A well known relevant case is the Munich agreement signed by Chamberlain from Great Britain and Hitler from Germany in 1938, which was rapidly revoked by Hitler as German armies invaded Czechoslovakia in 1939 (see article).

The P.L.O.'s Charter still calls for the destruction of the State of Israel. Fatah Constitution that is adopted as the unofficial constitution of the Palestinian Authority also calls for the destruction of the Jewish State in most of its clauses.

Back to first page