From the river to the sea . . .

[Richard D]

This discussion thread was locked as off-topic by Lithos (a host of the Israel/Palestine group).

. . . it looks like Palestine never really existed:

Interesting historical context, which I didn't know:

The book "Palaestina ex Monumentis Veteribus Illustrata" was written in Latin in 1695. The author, Adriaan Reland, was a geographer, cartographer, traveler, philologist, and linguist who was well-versed in several European languages, Arabic, Ancient Greek, and Hebrew.

He meticulously documented nearly 2,500 settlements mentioned in the Bible. His research was conducted as follows:
He first created a map of Palestine and marked each settlement mentioned in the Bible or the Talmud with its original name.
If the original name was in Hebrew, he marked it as "pasuk" (a passage in the Holy Scriptures where the name was mentioned).
If the original name was of Roman or Greek origin, he provided the Latin or Greek equivalent.
In the end, he compiled a census of the population based on these settlements. Here are some key findings and facts:
The land was mostly empty, abandoned, and sparsely populated, with the primary population centers in Jerusalem, Acre, Safed, Jaffa, Tiberias, and Gaza.

The majority of the population was Jewish, with almost all others being Christians, and very few Muslims, mainly Bedouins.
The only exception was Nablus (now Shechem), where about 120 people from the Muslim Nashash family lived alongside approximately 70 "Samaritans."

In Nazareth, the capital of Galilee, about 700 people lived, all of whom were Christians.

In Jerusalem, there were around 5,000 people, mostly Jews, with a few Christians.

In 1695, it was well-known that the roots of the country were Jewish.

There was not a single settlement in Palestine with Arabic origins in its name.

Most settlements had Hebrew originals, with some having Greek or Latin origins, which had been adapted into Arabic names that held no meaning in the Arabic language. For example, names like Acre, Haifa, Jaffa, Nablus, Gaza, or Jenin had no philological or historical Arabic roots.

Reland only mentioned Muslims as seasonal agricultural or construction laborers who came to the cities.
In Gaza, around 550 people lived, with half being Jewish and half Christian. Jews were engaged in successful agriculture, including vineyards, olives, and wheat, while Christians were involved in trade and transportation.
In Tiberias and Safed, Jews lived, but their occupations were not specified, except for their traditional fishing activities in the Sea of Galilee.

In the village of Umm al-Fahm, there were about ten families, all of whom were Christians (approximately 50 people). There was a small Maronite church in the village.

Reland's book thoroughly refutes theories about "Palestinian traditions" and a "Palestinian people" and establishes very little connection between this land and the Arabs, who even adopted the Latin name of the land (Palestine) and claimed it as their own.
Book by Adrian Reland (1676-1718) about Palestine, published in Utrecht in 1714.

Part 1: https://books.google.com/books?id=j5cUAAAAQAAJ&fbclid=IwAR3B4-K3a5RWCYbtElkjSVJab4H9p8VRQ0kDh_xK46jUOPtZEV0y7mP3GV4

Part 2: https://books.google.com/books?id=sZcUAAAAQAAJ&fbclid=IwAR0YnNvcT8AiL1S0Uc5-OKCBqg7HOin9jsU3ZHO5ScQ5AaG5w3TSVT6C6Z0

[Eko]

1. Dude never left the Netherlands.

And "Although he engaged with non-European matters in a remarkably unprejudiced way, he shared nevertheless some of the common assumptions of European scholars of his time regarding his main research interests, foremost of these being that Hebrew was the oldest language of the world (and that any other Semitic languages such as Arabic were of interest only because they could contribute to the study of it), and that Christianity in its Protestant form was the only true faith."
Not sure how he could tell who lived when he never went there.
Eko.

[RockRaven]

2. The guy never left the Netherlands/went to the Holy Land himself. And why

should anyone form a view of historical reality based upon the work of an 18th century publication rather than modern scholarship?

Would one read Edward Gibbon and adopt his conclusions about the Roman Empire instead of consulting more contemporary evidence/researchers?

[relayerbob]

3. Well, if 1695 is our baseline

then we'd best all start packing up and heading back to Europe. Humans have migrated and moved for our ENTIRE existence, and this argument, which I have seen elsewhere is both ridiculous and specious.

BOTH peoples have a right to live in peace without fear of attack.The rulers of each side don't want to accept that. Hamas is evil, Netanyahu is a tyrant. But that doesn't justify ethic cleansing of EITHER population.

But no one has the right to claim that since group A or B owned land centuries ago, that therefore, any and all subsequent claims are void. This would create utter chaos in the world. Where do we draw the line? And how is this different from Germany's annexations and claims of WW2? Ukraine would need to surrender to Russia immediately ... or maybe the other way around such Kieven Rus was a great state before Muscovy even had a farm on it. Maybe we need to go back further. Is all of the Eastern Med really Greek because Alexander the Great and his descendants ruled there? Maybe the Mongols should own most of Asia. Perhaps we should look for all the people with the highest concentration of Neanderthal genes and send them to Europe and remove everyone else.

We are here. And now. And once again, BOTH peoples have a right to live in peace without fear of attack.

[Eko]

4. There is a lot more evidence that it did and based on more than one book.

The term "Peleset" (transliterated from hieroglyphs as P-r-s-t) is found in five inscriptions referring to a neighboring people, who are generally identified with the Philistines,[2] or their land Philistia, starting from circa 1150 BCE during the Twentieth Dynasty of Egypt. The first known mention is at the Medinet Habu temple which refers to the Peleset among those who fought against Egypt during Ramesses III's reign,[3] and the last known is 300 years later on Padiiset's Statue. The Assyrians called the same region "Palashtu/Palastu" or "Pilistu," beginning with Adad-nirari III in the Nimrud Slab in c. 800 BCE through to an Esarhaddon treaty more than a century later.[4][5] Neither the Egyptian nor the Assyrian sources provided clear regional boundaries for the term.[6]

The term "Palestine" first appeared in the 5th century BCE when the ancient Greek historian Herodotus wrote of a "district of Syria, called Palaistinê" between Phoenicia and Egypt in The Histories.[7] Herodotus provides the first historical reference clearly denoting a wider region than biblical Philistia, as he applied the term to both the coastal and the inland regions such as the Judean Mountains and the Jordan Rift Valley.[8][9][10][11] Later Greek writers such as Aristotle, Polemon and Pausanias also used the word, which was followed by Roman writers such as Ovid, Tibullus, Pomponius Mela, Pliny the Elder, Dio Chrysostom, Statius, Plutarch as well as Roman Judean writers Philo of Alexandria and Josephus.[12] There is not currently evidence of the name on any Hellenistic coin or inscription.[13]

In the early 2nd century CE, the term "Syria Palaestina"[a] (literally, "Palestinian Syria"[14][15]) was given to a Roman province incorporating Judaea and other territories, either before or after the suppression of the Bar Kokhba revolt in 135.[16][17][18][19] In around the year 390, during the Byzantine period, the imperial province of Syria Palaestina was then reorganized into Palaestina Prima, Palaestina Secunda[20] and Palaestina Salutaris.[20] Following the Muslim conquest, place names that were in use by the Byzantine administration generally continued to be used in Arabic,[4][21] and the Jund Filastin became one of the military districts within the Umayyad and Abbasid province of Bilad al-Sham.[22]

[IronLionZion]

5. People exist.

People like having choice of where to live, work, travel, move, etc. You wouldn't like to be stateless and walled in with limited employment options and nowhere to go. You wouldn't like to be forcibly told to move somewhere else either. I wouldn't. I've moved many times but I don't like anyone telling me to leave my country where I was born, raised, and hold citizenship.

[stopdiggin]

6. looks like this one has been knocked down, kicked about ..

and pretty much dismantled from at least a couple different directions ..

[Eko]

7. Odd how the town of Umm al-Fahm has an arabic name.

Umm al-Fahm means "Mother of Charcoal" in Arabic.[2] According to local lore, the village was surrounded by forests which were used to produce charcoal.[4]
Not a single settlement in Palestine with Arabic origins in its name. Almost as if the research done was deeply flawed.

Eko.

[Aussie105]

8. Bias.

When people do historic research and focus on a particular period where they think things were good, fair and rational, and things should go back to that situation, we have bias.

It's an interesting historical perspective, but how relevant is it to the current situation, and does it offer a way forward?
(It isn't and it doesn't.)

Feel free to try to change my mind.

[Beastly Boy]

9. The research cited in the OP is too flawed for making any conclusions, but I still like the thread.

It shows that the lands we now commonly associate with the name Palestine have always been ethnically fluid regardless of how far back in history you go. Egyptians, Hittites, Jews, Babylonians, Greeks, Romans, Arab, Turkic and Kurdish caliphates, European crusaders, Ottomans, have all had sovereign control of the land, and at no point the entirety of Palestine had been homogeneous in its entirety. Jews, Arabs, Druz, Armenians, Assyrians, Bedouin and other ethnicities have equal claim to calling themselves Palestinian. And not a single one of them can claim Palestine "from the river to the sea" as their own.

This land has always been shared, and always will be. By conflict or coexistence, it will be shared. This is the only historical fact that is undeniable.

[Lithos]

10. Locking per forum guidelines

Not based on a *recent* news or op-ed article.