Palestine Essay ⋆ Political Science Essay Examples ⋆ EssayEmpire

The name Palestine historically traces as far back, at least, as the writings of Herodotus and applies to the territory between the Mediterranean Sea and the Jordan River (part of a larger area sometimes called Syria).This now includes the state of Israel, which was established in 1948, following the adoption in 1947 by the United Nations General Assembly of a plan (never implemented in its original form) for the partition of Palestine into a Jewish and an Arab state with an internationalized Jerusalem and the West Bank (including East Jerusalem) and Gaza Strip, both of which also came under Israeli rule in 1967 but, aside from East Jerusalem, have not been formally annexed. Proponents for making the whole area a permanent part of Israel sometimes call this, together with other areas ruled since 1967, “greater Israel.”

The name, as is apparent from its Arabic form, Filastin, is derived from one of its ancient and long extinct peoples, the Philistines. They settled the coastal area in the thirteenth century BCE (at about the same time the Israelites, at least according to the biblical account, invaded the interior of what then was called the Land of Canaan).The variant word Philistia is applied in the Old Testament, specifically to the coastal region. Following the end of the Jewish rebellion in 135 CE, the Romans made “Syria Palaestina” the official name of what had been the province of Judea. In subsequent centuries, its precise geographical boundaries have varied considerably, but it has remained the usual term for that geographical region, otherwise known as the Holy Land and, by Jews, as the EretzYisrael (land of Israel), a term that sometimes has included parts of adjacent countries.

Following the Arab conquest in the seventh century, Palestine formed part of various Muslim empires, aside the interregnum of crusader control from the late eleventh century to the late thirteenth century. Its existing population (including Jews) gradually was Arabized, as was the case in adjacent countries, although it always had at least a small Jewish population. Palestine came under Ottoman control in 1516, but much of the country temporarily gained de facto independence during the eighteenth century, when the reach of Istanbul had grown too weak to control it. In the latter years of Ottoman rule, southern Palestine constituted the Sanjak (subprovince) of Jerusalem, while northern Palestine was part of the Vilayet (province) of Beirut.

Although there already had been a growing Palestinian identity among its people, Palestine as a political entity dates back to the post–World War I (1939–1945) peace settlement, when the country was assigned to Great Britain as a Class A mandate under the newly created League of Nations. The mandate included a provision for developing a Jewish national home in Palestine while respecting the economic and civil rights of others (i.e., the Arab Palestinians, who constituted about 90 percent of the population).

Although the area east of the Jordan River (i.e., Transjordan) originally was included in the Palestine mandate, it was governed separately and came under the rule of the Hashimite Emir (and later the king) Abdullah in 1921. While Transjordan technically remained part of the Palestine mandate until its formal independence in 1946, the term Palestine came to be applied specifically to the area west of the Jordan River, and the only people in Transjordan (today’s Jordan) known as “Palestinians” are those who originated on the other side of the river.

With the emergence of the goal of a “two-state solution” to the Palestine question, “Palestine” has sometimes come to be used specifically for the Arab Palestinian state that many expect eventually to emerge in the West Bank (including East Jerusalem) and Gaza Strip.While representatives of the Arab Palestinians previously aspired to create a state that would include all of historic Palestine (and a few now espouse the idea of a unified, binational Israel-Palestine), the goal is now mostly limited to one in the West Bank and Gaza.Also,“Palestine” sometimes now refers to the Palestinian National Authority that was established in parts of this area subsequent to the Oslo Accords of 1994; the group hopes to develop into the government of a sovereign state.

Residents of Palestine, in general historically, were called “Palestinians.” This was no less true of the Jews, whose numbers were growing as a result of immigration during the period of the mandate. Since the establishment of the State of Israel in 1948, Jewish Israelis no longer call themselves Palestinians. Instead, the term refers to the Arab Palestinians. Arab Palestinians include those in the diaspora, the occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip, and the Arab minority in Israel proper.

Bibliography:

Benvenisti, Meron. Sacred Landscape:The Buried History of the Holy Land since 1948.
Translated by Maxine Kaufman-Lacusta. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2000.
Farsoun, Samih K., and Naseer Aruri. Palestine and the Palestinians. 2nd ed. Boulder:Westview Press, 2006.
Khalidi, Rashid. Palestinian Identity: The Construction f Modern National Consciousness. 2nd ed. New York: Columbia University Press, 2010.
Kimmerling, Baruch, and Joel S. Migdal. The Palestinian People: A History. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2003.
Pappe, Ilan. A History of Modern Palestine: One Land,Two Peoples. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2006.
Rubenberg, Cheryl A. The Palestinians: In Search of a Just Peace. Boulder: Lynne Rienner, 2003.
Sand, Shlmo. The Invention of the Jewish People. Translated by Yael Lotan. London:Verso, 2009.
Smith, Charles D. Palestine and the Arab-Israeli Conflict: A History with Documents. 6th ed. Boston: St. Martin’s Press, 2007.

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