Archpriest Seraphim Slobodskoy
The law of god
Old Testament
Palestine
Country Palestine, in which our Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ, lived on earth, is a relatively small strip of land (about three hundred kilometers in length and about a hundred kilometers in width), located along the eastern coast of the Mediterranean Sea.
In the north of Palestine, on the slopes of the Lebanese mountains lies Galilee... Picturesque hills, green pastures, countless gardens made Galilee the most beautiful part of Palestine. Her main beauty is now Lake of galilee, which is also called Gennesaret or Tiberias (it is twenty kilometers too long and a little more than nine in width). The shores of this lake at the time of the Savior were covered with rich vegetation; palms, vines, figs, almond trees, oleanders in bloom grew here. The beautiful cities of Capernaum, Tiberias, Chorazin and Bethsaida, located along the shores of this lake, were small, but very crowded. Their inhabitants led a simple and hard-working life. They cultivated every piece of land, were engaged in trade, various trades, mainly fishing.
South of Galilee lies Samaria... The inhabitants of Samaria (Samaritans) were in constant enmity with the Jews; they even built a separate temple for themselves on Mount Garizin, so as not to go to Jerusalem.
The largest part of Palestine, south of Samaria, is called Judea. Its western part is a plain, indented by small streams flowing into the Mediterranean Sea. This plain gradually rises to the east and ends in the Judean mountains; since ancient times it has been famous for its fertility. The slopes of these mountains are covered with greenery, covered with whole groves of olive trees; further and higher the mountains become rockier and sadder. Among these mountains stands a great city Jerusalem, the capital (main city) of Judea and all of Palestine.
The main river of Palestine - Jordan... Jordan begins in the Lebanese mountains in the form of clear mountain streams. As they descend into the valley, these streams form one river, which overflows and forms Lake Galilee. From this lake the Jordan flows out in the form of a fast wide river with low verdant banks; this place was called at that time the Jordan Valley. As we approach Judea, the banks of the Jordan become higher and more desolate, representing bare rocks, devoid of all vegetation; only the backwaters of the Jordan are covered with reeds. There were crocodiles and wild animals hiding. (This was the Jordanian Desert, where John the Baptist lived and preached). At the end of its course, the Jordan enters the wildest and most desolate area and flows into the Dead Sea.
500 thousand people
- 406 thousand people
- 250 thousand people
Mexico Mexico - 120 thousand people
- 70 thousand people
USA - 68 thousand people
Honduras Honduras - 54 thousand people
Kuwait - 50 thousand people
Brazil Brazil - 50 thousand people
- 34 thousand people
- 25 thousand people
- 24 thousand people
- 15 thousand people
- 12 thousand people
Guatemala Guatemala - 1.4 thousand people
- 500 people
Arab
Sunni Islam, partly Christian
Arab family in Ramallah, 1905
Do not have any racial, cultural, linguistic or religious differences from the Sunni Arab population of neighboring Arab countries. Until the middle of the 20th century, they did not consider themselves a separate people (but only "Arabs living in the province of Palestine"), and the term "Palestinians" did not exist. Of the political goals in the 1960s, especially after the Six Day War (1967), the "Palestinians" proclaimed themselves as a separate people.
It should be noted that there is no “p” in Arabic, so “Palestine” is pronounced “Falastin”.
origin of name
The uncircumcised Philistines were neither Arabs nor Semites, and had nothing to do with either Arabs or Arab countries. The Arabs came to the region of the Land of Israel much later, after the disappearance of the last remnants of the Philistines proper.
Self-determination
This definition shows that the "Palestinians" are not characterized by any national traits (culture, language or religion), but only politically: "who lived in the territory of Palestine before 1947".
(Note that the Charter recognizes "Jewish residents" as "Palestinians" only if they lived in the Country "before the Zionist invasion", i.e. before the 19th century, and recognizes "Arab residents" as Palestinians as of 1947 - although a significant number of Arab residents of the Land of Israel entered from neighboring Arab countries precisely in the late 19th - early 20th century.)
Ambiguity associated with the term "Palestinians"
For many hundreds of years, up to the beginning of the 20th century, the term "Palestinians" was used not as a noun (and even less as a designation for a people), but as an adjective: "Palestinians" were called Jews living in the territory of historical Israel or seeking to repatriate here.
Demography
According to the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics (December 2009), the total number of Palestinians in the world is about 10.9 million.
According to PCBS data released in December 2011, Palestinians make up the bulk of the population of the Palestinian Authority (4.17 million) (including 2.58 million in the West Bank and 1.59 million in the Gaza Strip) and Jordan (3 , 4 million).
In addition, they live in the Middle East - Syria (about 500 thousand), (405 thousand), etc. There are also their numerous communities in some American countries - Chile (450-500 thousand), USA (68 thousand), Honduras (54 thousand), Brazil (50 thousand), etc.
This overstatement is done by the PCSP for political reasons. The "demographic threat" is used as one of the arguments for the need for an Israeli retreat from the territory of Judea and Samaria. In particular, one of the apologists for this idea is the geographer professor Amnon Sofer from the University of Haifa, who, according to his own testimony in a radio interview on Reshet Bet, for many years has been introducing this idea into the minds of the Israeli political elite.
His opponents are Middle East experts Yoram Ettinger and Bennett Zimmerman. So in March 2006, Bennett Zimmerman, Roberta Zayd and Michael Weisz published a scientific article on this topic. A study by the authors of the article (BESA staff) that analyzed Palestinian demographics scientifically shows that in 2004 the population of Judea, Samaria and the Gaza Strip was 2.5 million, not 3.8 million as Palestinians claim.
To inflate the figures, Palestinian statisticians included over 300,000 Palestinians living abroad among the Palestinians living in Judea, Samaria and Gaza, twice counted more than 200,000 Arab residents of East Jerusalem, already included in Israeli statistics as "Israeli Arabs" ... Subsequently, the Palestinian Bureau of Statistics, based on these figures, published unrealistic forecasts of the birth rate, including forecasts of massive Palestinian immigration, which never began, and not taking into account the significant Palestinian emigration from the territories of Judea, Samaria and Gaza to both neighboring Arab countries and and to more distant places, in particular to Latin America. As a result, the Report on the Arab Population in Judea, Samaria and Gaza, published in 2004, inflated the real population by more than 50% (from 2.5 million to 3.8 million). Research by BESA employees and further demographic studies show that the problem of demographic pressure on Israel is clearly exaggerated.
Concepts of the origins of the Palestinians
The version about the origin of the Palestinians from the descendants of the pre-Jewish population of Canaan
Some authors have argued that the Palestinians are descendants of the indigenous people of Palestine who lived here even before the settlement of the land by Jews in the 13th century BC. ... According to this theory, the Palestinians are the descendants of the Canaanites and Philistines, mixed with the descendants of other peoples who have invaded Canaan throughout history - the Babylonians, Hittites, Egyptians, Jews, Persians, Greeks, Romans, Arabs, and Turks. According to this version, in the 7th century after the invasion of the Arabs, the local population converted to Islam and gradually switched to Arabic.
Although this theory is in no way substantiated (and contradicts all accepted historiography), Palestinian leaders support the theory of the origin of the Palestinians from the ancient pre-Jewish population of Canaan. This, according to the Palestinians, proves their right to Palestine, since, according to this version, they appeared in the country even earlier than the Jews who came from Egypt. They are supported by some Israeli politicians of the extreme left, showing ideological solidarity with them, like Uri Avnery.
The version about the origin of some of the Palestinians from Jews
Among the Palestinian Arabs, there are two clearly divided groups: (1) recent, over the last century, settlers from neighboring Arab countries, (2) more "indigenous" villagers in whom the village belongs to one or more large clans.
Regarding the second group, genetic research indicates a certain similarity between their genotype and that of the Jews. According to some researchers, up to 85% of these "indigenous village" Palestinians have Jewish roots, and in some of their villages Jewish customs were still prevalent.
Thus, the Israeli entrepreneur and amateur historian Zvi Mi-Sinai believes that most of the "village Palestinians" are descendants of the Jewish population of ancient Judea, as evidenced by their names, language features, traditions, the names of settlements - since some of the Jews who lived in the Earth Israel, was forcibly converted to Islam.
One of the historians of Palestine, James Parks (in Whose Land?) Points out that “until 1914, the bulk of the Palestinian population had no feelings of belonging to anything more significant than their village, clan, or confederation of clans.<…>Until that moment, it was impossible to talk about their belonging to any nationality, and even the word "Arab" had to be used carefully. It was applied to the Bedouins and to some of the townspeople and the nobility; however, it was not suitable for describing the bulk of the rural population of the fellah peasants. "
According to Parks, in the 19th century, enough "reliable information was collected about their customs, religion and origins." It turned out that "the most ancient element among the Fallahs were not the Arabs, when the Arabs came to Palestine, the Fallahs were already there." This is proved by "the presence of customs that were not a product of Islam, but resembled in some cases the pre-Israelite religion, and in some cases - the Jewish mosaic code of laws."
Parks wrote: “The aliens (Arabs) were never numerous enough to drive out the existing population.<…>It is fair to say that the oldest element of the Palestinian peasantry is composed primarily of former Jews and former Christians. ... There are entire villages that are Muslim today, but two hundred years ago they were Christian and Jewish. "
Palestinians as a product of pro-Nazi propaganda
Palestine and the Palestinians, Part 1
In the 1930s, the term quite unambiguously means: "a person living in Palestine", without any reference to ethnicity. See these parliamentary debates, for example:
The right hon. Gentleman the Member for Darwen said that a number of Palestinians have bought land on the other side of the Jordan. It has been bought by Arabs, and also by Jews.
The same is shown by the official British statistical compilations of the time. Thus, neither the 30s nor the 40s. out of the question.
For the first time in widespread use, this meaning appears in Life magazine in the fall of 1951 and is still used interchangeably with the terms "refugees" and "Arabs":
The refugees blame their plight on four groups: 1) the British - for selling them out to the Jews ... 2) The Americans - for pouring money and political support to the Israelis; 3) The Arab League governments - for failing to defend them; 4) The Jews.
The Palestinians place far more blame on the first three.
It is interesting, however, what made the reporter choose this particular term (and not the established "Palestinian Arabs", for example). Fortunately, another Life issue has an answer to this question:
Britain and the U.S., he continued, connived with the Jews to keep the Palestinians - the term he invariably used for the Arab refugees - from returning to the farms and homes which had belonged to them since biblical days.
The interviewee is the well-known Grand Mufti Hajj-Amin Al-Husseini.
The following points are interesting here:
1) The myth "the Palestinians from the biblical days lived on their land until the Western imperialists, having conspired with the Jews, drove them out of there" is encountered in an almost finished form; 2) But at the same time, the journalist is still unfamiliar with this term in this capacity - and he even gives a special explanation of what should be understood by this as Arab refugees.
So, the term "Palestinians" in this sense ("Arabs who lived in Palestine until 1948, and only they") owes its birth to the Nazi echo who helped to carry out the genocide of the Jews to the best of its ability, and with his suggestion was readily picked up by the Western press.
Which, in fact, is not surprising.
Palestinians as part of the Arab population of neighboring countries
The Arabs appeared in Palestine only in the 7th century AD. NS. - during the Arab conquests and the creation of the caliphate, that is, much later than the Jews. The Arabs were not strongly attached to a specific place of residence, and moved to those parts of the region where there was work. Several waves of Jewish repatriation to Palestine in the 19th and early 20th centuries, the sharp economic development of the region associated with the emergence of new settlements here and the emergence of agricultural land, created the prerequisites for attracting Arab labor, which contributed to active Arab immigration to the country.
The non-autochthonous origin of most of the Palestinians is indicated by their surnames containing toponyms of other countries - al-Masri ("Egyptian" is an extremely common surname in the region), al-Hijazi (Hijaz - the western coast of the Arabian Peninsula, including Mecca and Medina, modern Saudi Arabia ), al-Halabi (Aleppo or Aleppo is a city in Syria), al-Yamani (a surname very common in Saudi Arabia).
In view of this, up until the twentieth century, the Arabs of Palestine naturally considered themselves part of the Arab people. The Arab peoples of the Middle East have a common culture based on the unity of language, history and common traditional social structures, which is also typical for the Palestinians.
In April 2012, Hamas' '' minister 'of internal affairs and government security' 'in Gaza, Fathi Hamad, stated that he himself was' half Egyptian' and that 'half of the Palestinians are Egyptians and the other half are Saudis', and that' every Palestinian in Gaza and in the West Bank boasts ancestors from Saudi Arabia, or elsewhere. "
Denial of the existence of a "separate Palestinian people"
Not only Israelis, but also some Arabs deny the existence of the Palestinian people as such. Among them is Joseph Farah, an Arab-Christian American journalist known as one of the most loyal friends of Israel in the world, and an Arab-Palestinian American, by his own admission, a former PLO member and terrorist Walid Shebat.
The arguments of the proponents of this approach are as follows:
- no mention of the Palestinians as a separate people is known until 1967;
- neither the Palestinian language, nor the Palestinian culture, nor any other characteristics by which the Palestinian Arabs could be distinguished from the Arabs of Egypt, Lebanon or Jordan, does not exist and did not exist before;
- even while the territory was under Arab control, there was no state called "Palestine" ruled by Palestinians.
It is interesting to note that the Arabs started talking about Palestinian self-determination only after their defeat in the Six Day War. For 19 years, Jordan ruled in Judea and Samaria, and during all this time not a single Arab leader hinted at the Palestinians' right to create their own state (the same applies to Egyptian rule in the Gaza Strip). When, before 1967, Arab leaders talked about the "rights of the Palestinians," they meant the right to return to the borders of the State of Israel in Haifa, Jaffa and Akko. The implication of this demand was obvious: in order to realize the "rights of the Palestinians", it is necessary to destroy the Jewish state. As funny as it sounds, during the years of the British Mandate, it was the Jews of Eretz Yisrael who called themselves Palestinians... The Palestine Post was a Jewish newspaper and the Palestine Philharmonic Orchestra was a Jewish collective. The British called the Palestinians soldiers who served in the Jewish Brigade in the British army. Of course, the “Palestinian Arabs” lived alongside the “Palestinian Jews” in Eretz Yisrael, but at that time the Arab inhabitants of the country did not yet wave their own national banner. On the contrary, they in every possible way emphasized their belonging to the "great Arab nation" ...
Zahir Muhsein, a member of the Executive Committee of the Palestine Liberation Organization, which held the position of pan-Arabism, said in an interview with the Dutch newspaper Trau:
The Palestinian people do not exist. The founding of a Palestinian state is only a means of continuing our struggle against the State of Israel for Arab unity ... In fact, there is no difference between Jordanians, Palestinians, Syrians and Lebanese. It is only for political and tactical reasons that we speak of the existence of the Palestinian people, since the Arab national interest requires the existence of a separate Palestinian people to oppose Zionism. For tactical reasons, Jordan, which is a state with definite borders, cannot make claims against Haifa and Jaffa. But as a Palestinian I can certainly demand Haifa, Jaffa, Beer Sheva and Jerusalem. However, the moment we regain our rights to all of Palestine, we will not hesitate a minute to unite Palestine with Jordan.
A similar statement, but with the assertion that Palestine belongs to Syria, and no "Palestinian people" exists, was also made by the President of Syria Hafez Assad.
Refugees
Note that the worst situation for the Palestinians was in Lebanon, where until August 2010 Palestinians were prohibited from engaging in 72 "profitable" professions.
Created by the United Nations in December 1949, the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Middle East (UNRWA) recognizes the Palestinians and their descendants (more than 4 million people) displaced during the wars as refugees. This is the only group of forced migrants in the world to which the rule of recognition of offspring born outside the country applies as refugees.
According to the UN, the number of Palestine refugees registered by UNRWA (as of January 2010) is 4,766,670 people. Including in Jordan - 1 983 733, in Syria - 472 109, in Lebanon - 425 640, in Judea and Samaria - 778 993, in the Gaza Strip - 1 106 195. 1,396,368 of them live in refugee camps.
Footnotes
- The population of the PNA has reached 4.2 million, 41% of the population are children under 14 years of age
- (Arab. الفلسطينيون , al-filasTīnīyyūn, Heb. פלסטינים)
- Article " philistines" v
- http://www.litmir.net/br/?b=8874&p=7
- Article " Land of Israel (Eretz Yisrael). Geographic outline"In the Electronic Jewish Encyclopedia
- Alfred Ash Who are the Palestinians?
- http://pravitelimira.ru/biograf/bio_g/gasanidy.php
- Sheikh Abdullah Palazzi. THE QURAN SAYS: "THE JEWS WILL RETURN TO THEIR LAND"
- Boris Schustef. PALESTINIAN SHARON
- For example, the name of the movement Khibat Zion ("Lovers of Zion"), which emerged in Russia in 1882, was then translated into Russian as ["Palestinophiles"]
- Golda Meir, June 15, 1969
- PNA reported data from "world census of Palestinians": 10.9 million people
- PCBS: On the Eve of the International Population Day 11/7/2011
- Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics (PCBS) On the Eve of the International Population Day 11/7/2011
- US Department of State. Background Note: Syria
- descendientes de árabes en porcentajes.
- 500,000 mil descendientes de palestinos en Chile.
- Bennett Zimmerman, Sergio DellaPergola. What is the True Demographic Picture in the West Bank and Gaza? A Presentation and a Critique
- Palestinian Demographics: Where Are A Million Arabs Lost?
Once a beautiful area with clean, intact residential buildings and infrastructure, now the territory of Palestine is a dilapidated disaster zone. The ongoing war for the right to own their ancestral lands takes away the opportunity to breathe for the population and restore their economic activity.
The story of a small but very proud state is still sad, but the Palestinians are full of hopes for a brighter future. They believe that one day Allah will remove all infidels from their path and give peace and freedom to the Palestinian people.
Where is Palestine located?
The Palestinian Territory is located in the Middle East. The geographical map includes the Asian countries of the south-western part of this territory: Qatar, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain and others. Among them, there are surprising differences in the state system: some states are distinguished by republican rule, others - by monarchical.
Historians have proven that the territories of the Middle East are the ancestral home of ancient civilizations that disappeared many millions of years ago. Three famous world religions appeared here - Islam, Judaism and Christianity. The terrain mainly consists of sandy deserts or impassable mountains. For the most part, there is no farming here. However, many countries have risen to the peak of their modern development thanks to the oil fields.
Territorial strife is a darkening factor for the inhabitants, due to which a huge number of civilians die. Since the emergence of a Jewish state among them was an unexpected factor, almost all countries of the second paragraph abandoned diplomatic relations with Israel. And the military conflicts between Israelis and Palestinians have continued from 1947 to the present day.
Initially, the location of Palestine covered the entire area, from the waters of the Jordan to the Mediterranean shores. In the middle of the last century, the Palestinian position changed after the creation of the famous state of Israel.
Which city is the status of Jerusalem
The history of the ancient city of Jerusalem goes back to deep times before our era. Modern realities do not leave the sacred land alone. The division of the city began immediately after the establishment of the borders of Israel and the Arab state in 1947, after years of British claims. However, Jerusalem was endowed with a special status of an international scale, all military garrisons were to be withdrawn from it, respectively, life was supposed to be exclusively peaceful. But, as often happens, everything did not go according to plan. Despite the instructions of the UN, in 48-49 years of the twentieth century, there was a military conflict between the Arabs and the Israelis, over the establishment of power over Jerusalem. As a result, the city was divided into parts between the Jordanian state, which was given the eastern part, and the Israeli state, which got the western territories of the ancient city.
The famous Six Day War of 67 of the XX century was won by Israel, and Jerusalem was fully included in its composition. But the UN Security Council did not agree with this policy and ordered Israel to withdraw its troops from Jerusalem, recalling the 1947 decree. However, Israel spat on all the demands and refused to demilitarize the city. And on May 6, 2004, the United Nations General Assembly proclaimed the full right of Palestine to occupy the eastern part of Jerusalem. Then military conflicts began with renewed vigor.
Now in Palestine there is a temporary capital - Ramallah, located thirteen kilometers from Israel, in the center of the western banks of the Jordan River. The city was recognized as the capital of Palestine in 1993. In the 1400s BC, the settlement of Rama was located on the site of the city. This was the era of the Judges, and the place was a holy Mecca for Israel. The modern borders of the city were formed in the middle of the 16th century. Wars were also fought over this city, and at the beginning of the second millennium AD, the city was finally transferred to the state of Palestine. The burial place of Yasser Arafat, who passed away in 2004, is located in Ramallah. The population is twenty-seven and a half thousand people, live here exclusively Arabs, some of whom profess Islam, and part of Christianity.
President of the country
The President of Palestine is the same chairman of the Palestinian National Authority. As in many presidential countries, he is the commander-in-chief of the Armed Forces. The President has the right to appoint and remove the Prime Minister, and is also personally responsible for approving the composition of the government. The President can remove the powers of the head of the board at any time. In his power is the dissolution of parliament and the appointment of early elections. The President of Palestine is the determining element in matters of foreign and domestic policy.
As a historical reference, we can refer to the fact that according to the UN decree, Palestine was prohibited from representing its head as the President of Palestine, despite the fact that the state of Palestine was officially created in 1988. The penultimate chairman, Yasser Arafat, did not use the word president for his position. But the current chairman of the Palestinian Authority in 2013 issued a decree on the official replacement of the post with the presidential one. True, many countries around the world did not recognize such a change.
The name of the President, who has been ruling for four years now, is Abu Mazen. The Palestinian president's term of office cannot exceed five years and can only be re-elected once in a row. Yasser Arafat, his predecessor, died while in office.
Where are the borders of Palestine? Country geography
Officially the state of Palestine was recognized only by 136 UN member states out of 193. The historical territory of Palestine is divided into four parts, which consist of the lands of the coastal plain to the Mediterranean territories of Galilee - the northern part, Samaria - the central part, located in the north side of the holy Jerusalem and Judea - the southern part including Jerusalem itself. These boundaries were established according to the biblical scriptures. However, at the moment, the Palestinian area is divided into only two parts: the banks of the Jordan River, the river in Palestine (its western part) and the Gaza Strip.
Consider the first component of the Arab state. stretched for only 6 thousand kilometers, and the total length of the border is four hundred kilometers. It is quite hot here in summer, but climatic conditions are mild in winter. The lowest point in the area is the Dead Sea with its 400 meters below sea level. With the help of irrigation, local residents have adapted to using the land for agricultural needs.
The West Bank is a predominantly flat area. Palestine as a whole has a very small amount of territorial land - 6,220 square kilometers. The main part of the western plain is covered with small hills and desert, there is no sea connection. And the forest area is only one percent. Accordingly, the border of Palestine with Jordan runs here.
The next part of the country is the Gaza Strip, with a border length of sixty-two kilometers. The area is made up of hills and sand dunes, the climate is dry and the summers are very hot. Gaza is almost entirely dependent on the supply of drinking water from the source of Wadi Gaza, which supplies water to Israel. The Gaza Strip borders with Israel and is conditioned in all vital communications that the Jewish state has established. In the west, Gaza is washed by the Mediterranean Sea, and in the south it borders with Egypt.
Inhabitants
Considering that the area of Palestine is quite small, then the population in Palestine is only about five million. The exact data for 2017 is 4 million 990 thousand 882 people. If we recall the middle of the twentieth century, then the population growth in half a century amounted to almost 4 million. Compared to 1951, when the country consisted of 900 thousand people. The number of male and female populations is practically the same, the birth rate exceeds the death rate, perhaps this is also due to a slight decrease in hostilities in the form of bombing of populated areas. Migration is just as popular, with nearly ten thousand people fleeing Palestine this year. The average life expectancy for men is only 4 years less than for women and is 72 and 76 years, respectively.
Since according to the UN decree, the eastern part of Jerusalem belongs to Palestine, the population is almost all Israelis, in general, like the west of the city. The Gaza Strip is inhabited mainly by Arabs professing Sunni Islam, but a couple of thousand Arabs with a Christian cross around their necks are among them. In general, Gaza is mainly a settlement of refugees who fled from Israel 60 years ago. Today hereditary refugees live in Gaza.
An estimated four million former Palestinian residents are in refugee status. They settled in the territories of Jordan, Lebanon, Syria, Egypt and other states of the Middle East. The official language of Palestine is Arabic, but knowledge of Hebrew, English and French is common.
History of origin
The historical name of the state of Palestine comes from Philistia. The population of Palestine at that time was also called the Philistines, which literally translated from Hebrew means "invaders." The settlement of the Philistines was the modern Mediterranean coast of Israel. The second millennium BC was marked by the appearance of Jews in these territories, who called the area Canaan. In the Jewish Bible, Palestine is referred to as the Land of the Sons of Israel. Since the time of Herodotus, the rest of the Greek philosophers and scientists began to call Palestine Syria Palestinian.
In all history textbooks, the state of Palestine dates back to the colonization of the area by the Canaanite tribes. In the early period before the coming of Christ, the area was captured by different peoples: Egyptians, invaders from the coast of Crete, and so on. 930 BC divided the country into two different states - the kingdom of Israel and the kingdom of Judah.
The population of Palestine suffered from the aggressive actions of the ancient Persian state of Achaemenid, it was annexed by various states of the Hellenistic period, in 395 it was part of Byzantium. However, the revolt against the Romans brought exile for the Jewish people.
From 636, Palestine fell under the control of the Arabs, and for six centuries the ball rolled from the hands of the Arab conquerors to the hands of the Crusaders. Since the 13th century, Palestine has been part of the Egyptian kingdom, and it was ruled by the Mamluks until the arrival of the Ottomans.
The beginning of the 16th century falls on the reign of Selim the First, who enlarges his territories with the help of a sword. For 400 years, the population of Palestine was subject to the Ottoman Empire. Of course, over the years, the territory was tried to take possession of the next European military expeditions, for example, Napoleon. Meanwhile, the Jews who had fled had returned to Jerusalem. Together with Nazareth and Bethlehem, leadership was conducted on behalf of Orthodox and Catholic church leaders. But outside the boundaries of the holy cities among the population, the overwhelming majority still remained Sunni Arabs.
The forced settlement of Palestine by Jews
In the 19th century, Ibrahim Pasha came to the country, he conquered the lands and founds his residence in. For eight years of reign, the Egyptians managed to carry out a reform movement on the models presented by him in Europe. Natural resistance from the Muslim people was not long in coming, but they suppressed it with bloody military force. Despite this, during the period of the Egyptian occupation in the territories of Palestine, grandiose excavations and studies were carried out. Scholars have tried to find evidence for the biblical scriptures. Closer to the middle of the 19th century, a British consulate was organized in Jerusalem.
At the end of the 19th century, the Jewish people poured into Palestine at a breakneck speed, mostly followers of Zionism. A new stage in the history of the state of Palestine began. At the beginning of the last century, the Arab population was 450 thousand, and the Jewish - 50 thousand.
After the First World War, London established its mandate over the territories of Palestine and present-day Jordan. The British authorities pledged to create a large national Jewish diaspora in Palestine. In this regard, in the 1920s, the Transjordanian state was formed, where Jews from Eastern Europe began to move, and their number increased to 90 thousand. In order for everyone to find something to do, they specially drained the swamps of the Israel Valley and prepared land for agricultural activities.
After the sad events in Germany and other European countries, Hitler came to power, some of the Jews managed to leave for Jerusalem, but the rest underwent severe repression, the consequences of which the whole world knows and grieves. After the end of World War II, Jews constituted thirty percent of the total population of Palestine.
The creation of Israel was a blow to the Palestinian territories and the state as a whole. The United Nations, by its right, decided to allocate a certain piece of the Palestinian kingdom for the Jews and give it to them to create a separate Jewish state. From this moment, serious military conflicts begin between the Arab and Jewish people, each fighting for their ancestral lands, for their truth. At the moment, the situation has not yet been resolved and the confrontation with the Palestinian army continues.
By the way, the Soviet Union also had its part in the Arab lands, which were called Russian Palestine and were acquired during the time of the Russian Empire. On the lands there were special real estate objects that were intended for Russian pilgrims and Orthodox people from other countries. However, later in the 60s, these lands were resold to Israel.
The Palestinian Liberation Army is protecting the President and the Palestinian lands. In fact, it is a separate military organization with its headquarters in Syria and supported by the Syrian Islamists, therefore, according to some Russian and Israeli sources, the AOP is a terrorist group. She took part in almost all hostilities against Palestine and its leaders condemn all military activities against Syria and the Syrian people from the Western countries.
Country culture
The culture of Palestine in its modern form is represented by works and works of local art. Palestine is gradually developing cinematography; taking into account world examples, the dynamics can be traced at a good level.
In general, the art of Palestine is closely related to the Jewish, because these two peoples have lived side by side for hundreds of years. Despite the political strife, literature and painting are based on the traditional culture of the Jews, and practically nothing remains of the Arab past. More than seventy percent of the population is Sunni Muslim, that is, Islam is the traditional religion of the state, which coexists with a minority in the form of Christians and Jews.
The same goes for customs and traditions. Almost nothing is observed from the Arabs in Palestine: for many centuries, the Palestinians have absorbed Jewish traditions both in the song syllable and in the dance step. The design of the houses and the interior decoration are also almost identical to the Jewish one.
Present state of Palestine
Today, the largest cities in Palestine can be called Jerusalem (considering its Eastern part, given by the UN to Palestine), Ramallah (the capital city), Jenin and Nablus. By the way, the only airport was located in the zone of the temporary capital, but in 2001 it was closed.
Modern Palestine looks depressing outwardly, crossing the famous wall, which is a military fence between the two countries, you find yourself in a world of complete ruin and "dead" silence. Houses dilapidated from the bombing are bordered by newly rebuilt houses. Many Palestinians, left without a roof over their heads, live the lives of refugees and set up stone caves for rooms. They build masonry walls to enclose the family area. Despite the advanced development in various spheres, poverty prevails over the number of jobs. Having driven a little deeper through the country, we find ourselves in the last century, where there is no electricity or is supplied at certain hours. Many people burn fires to warm them right on the floor of the former entrances of now destroyed houses. Some have not left the half-collapsed home, they continue to make internal frames for resilience, because there is simply no opportunity for major repairs - the financial security does not allow spending so much money on expensive restoration.
On the border of the two belligerent states, a thorough examination of documents is underway. If the bus is a tourist, then the police may not drive everyone out into the street, but simply walk around the cabin and check the passports. The thing is that Israelis are prohibited from entering Palestinian territory, in particular, in zone A. Everywhere on the roads there are indications of zones, and warning signs that it is dangerous for an Israeli to be in this place. Although who will go there? But many Palestinians, on the contrary, have Israeli certificates and, accordingly, dual citizenship (if Palestine is taken as a separate separate state).
The local currency is the Israeli shekel. Which is convenient for tourists who unexpectedly find themselves from the western part of Jerusalem to the eastern one. The central parts of the temporary capital and major cities look more modern and even have their own nightlife. According to the stories of tourists, people here are hospitable and always strive to help, but they cannot do without fraudulent taxi drivers and street guides. Despite the close connection with Israeli culture, Muslim shrines are highly revered by local Arab residents, so dress accordingly for a trip to Palestine.
In recent years, the next problem between Palestinians and Israelis has been the construction of Israeli settlements in the west of the Jordan River and in East Jerusalem. Officially, such settlements are prohibited and illegal. Some Arab families have lost their private lands, which, however, promise to be returned in cash.
But there are also Jewish houses for demolition on the western bank of the Jordan River, the resettlement of such people has been delayed for ten years, the reason for this is the reluctance of the Jews themselves to leave their territories. They are building barricades and rallies. The Palestinians, on the other hand, are fierce opponents of any presence of a Jewish commune on the lands of their state. Thus, the conflict drags on for even longer years, because Israel categorically refuses to listen to the instructions of the UN, and the idea of creating two separate states is gradually becoming utopian.
Jordan river
There are only three rivers in the Palestinian state: Jordan, Kishon, Lachish. Of course, the most interesting is the Jordan River. And not by their attitude to Palestine or Israel, but from a spiritual point of view. It was here that the baptism of Christ took place, after which he was proclaimed the prophet Jesus, and it is here that pilgrims come to wash, and many to accept the faith of Christianity. In ancient times, the pilgrims took away with them clothes that were completely soaked in the waters of the Jordan, and the sailors scooped up the sacred water in buckets for storage on the ship. Such ceremonies were believed to bring good luck and happiness.
After the "Six Day War" in Israel, there was almost a consensus on the issue that there should be no other state between the Jordan and the sea, except for the Jewish one (no more than 10-15% of the leftists were opposed at that time). By now, at least 50% of Jews have already agreed with the creation of a "Palestinian state." That is, they were taught that the people compactly living in the “patrimony” of Abu Mazen, in this very Judophobic place on Earth, represent some kind of Palestinian people, previously unknown to anyone. And they were also taught that the price of control over the "territories" was too high, and they believed in the attainability of a "peace agreement" with the Arabs.
But according to the military historian Uri Milstein, there was another reason for the adoption of the "Oslo agreements." “On August 19, 1993, 9 IDF fighters were killed. Rabin was shocked. Peres came to him and said: a process is underway in Oslo - get involved in it. " That is, Rabin's decision to agree to "Oslo" was made by him in a state of shock.
In late 1993, Milstein published his book Collapse and Conclusions, in which he predicted the withdrawal from Gaza, Judea, Samaria and the Golan, as Israel changed the strategy of defeating the enemy to a strategy of armistice in exchange for territory. That is why the topic has occupied an important place in conversations among young people over time - "How and where to leave Israel after the army".
The initiators of the Norwegian agreements managed to convince their compatriots not only that the so-called Palestinians are a separate people with the right to their own state. They also presented the terrorist organization of the PLO as a national liberation movement of this people, which is no worse than Zionism for the Jews. And since both national liberation movements claim the same territory, then in order to resolve the conflict between them, it (this tiny territory) must be divided.
Later, however, it turned out that the Palestinian side views the conflict with Israel as its own struggle against the occupying colonialists, who must get out not only from Judea, Samaria and Gaza, but from the entire Middle East region in general. But by that time, the liberal Western public was already so imbued with the aspirations of this artificially created and suddenly disadvantaged Palestinian people that the arguments about the absence of any signs of a people in it are not completely accepted.
Moreover, any event that takes place in Israel, from the election of a new government to the construction of housing in Jerusalem, is perceived by the Palestinian Authority and the leadership of the European Union as a threat to the "peace process." The liberal media immediately rises up such a powerful anti-Israeli wave, which is hardly worth ignoring.
So is this community, among which, according to the Anti-Defamation League, 93 percent hate Jews fiercely, a people? I will try to take the place of this liberal community and start looking for at least some signs of this supposedly people. According to the explanatory dictionary of the Russian language, the people are "the population of the state, the inhabitants of the country." This means that the aforementioned patrimony must first be recognized by the state, and then the people will appear there. However, in relation to what is called the Palestinian people, not only was the sequence broken, but the very name of the "people" was changed.
After the collapse of the Ottoman Empire until 1948, there was no state on the territory between the Jordan and the Mediterranean Sea. In 48 AD the state of Israel was established there. Some of the Arabs living in that territory received Israeli passports and became Israelis. Another part of the Arabs after the occupation of Judea and Samaria by Jordan received Jordanian passports. A third of the Arabs who lived in the Gaza Strip, occupied by Egypt, did not receive Egyptian passports and remained simply Arabs.
In 1967, after a victorious six-day war, all of these territories came under Israeli control. And from that moment the Arabs-Jordanians in Samaria and Judea and Arabs in the Gaza Strip suddenly realized themselves as a Palestinian people with a long history, and began to fight for their liberation from the Jewish occupation.
How did it happen that these people - Jordanians and simply Arabs - suddenly felt themselves to be a single social whole with a common historical destiny? Why don't the Jordanians on the other side of the Jordan claim to be descended from the ancient Philistines?
As for the centuries-old history, originating from the Philistines, this is a clear falsification that does not require proof. But maybe these people have other unifying factors? Of course there are. One has already been mentioned - this is their fierce hatred of the Jews. The second factor is massive, deep-rooted lumpenisation. Probably, unlike the first factor, this one needs clarification.
Joint labor activity is an important characteristic of any nation. The Palestinian Arabs, on the other hand, live mainly on handouts from the world community. At the same time, they hate and despise those who help them, especially Jews, towards whom they show aggression and at the same time demand something from them all the time.
And all this constitutes their collective social experience, which will determine the identity of the Palestinian Arabs as a separate people, if the Palestinian autonomy receives the status of an independent state. Can Israel do this in the hope that the negative qualities of the Palestinian people after the recognition of its independence will change and become positive, or this step will be suicidal for the State of Israel and for the Jews?
The troubles, perhaps, began with the fact that the Jewish state was decided to create as a state of all people inhabiting this territory allocated to Jews by the decision of the UN, and not as a national home of the Jewish people, according to the decision of the League of Nations. Then both the socialist Zionists and the Zionist revisionists who replaced them in 1977 slipped into a primitive struggle for power and the right to lead the people, which gradually brought society to the brink of survival of both the people and the State itself.
Through the efforts of government officials, Israel turned out to be overly dependent on the conjuncture of foreign markets. At the same time, state speculation in land has created conditions for raising the cost of living not only for the low-paid segment of the population, but also for the middle class, lowering its social status.
At the same time, there is a self-seizure of land by the Arab minority, which denies the Jewish character of the country, which threatens the destruction of the country. For the benefit of the Arab minority, laws inherited from the Turkish rule of Palestine, the British Mandate and the Jordanian occupation are applied. As a result, Arabs are already in the majority in some regions of the country, and entire sectors of the economy have been captured by them.
However, let us return to the question of the origin of the Palestinian people, since a complete analysis of the state system of Israel is beyond the scope of this work. It turns out that a similar name - "the Palestinian Arab people" - sounded even before 1967 in the introduction to the Palestinian charter. That is, the purpose of the use of this awkward term was, apparently, to link the Arabs with Palestine, while at the same time presenting the Jews as colonialists. This is similar to the efforts of the Romans who tried to sever the Jewish connection with the territory and renamed ancient Judea Palestine. But the connection of Jews with this land has not been interrupted since biblical times, and since 1845 they have consistently made up the majority of the population of Palestine.
The very same name "Palestinian Arab people", like many other things, including "national liberation struggle" against Jewish "oppressors", was coined by the KGB. Since then, terrorist attacks have come to be called "resistance." To succeed in this struggle, Yasser Arafat began to call the terrorist war a struggle for the human rights of the unfortunate Palestinians oppressed by the colonial rule of the Jews.
Such tricks easily misled Western sponsors, and billions of dollars were poured into the PLO's accounts. The PLO leader was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. This line was successfully continued by Mahmoud Abbas, instilling hatred of Jews and his main ally, the United States of America, throughout the Islamic world. That is, according to the KGB's plan, the "national liberation struggle" of the Palestinians against the Jewish "colonialists" should have served as a fuse. And it did set the Islamic world on fire not only against Israel, but also against its ally - the United States, which was the goal of the leadership of the former USSR.
Today Obama is trying in every possible way to break this link, building bridges with Iran and the terrorist groups it supports, neglecting Israel's security interests. The head of the presidential administration Denis McDonough, in an ultimatum, demanded that Israel retreat to the 1949 armistice line and eliminate all Jewish settlements in the "occupied" territories. Of course, he only voiced the "idea" of Barack Obama himself. This, in principle, can be followed by unilateral recognition of the Palestinian state at a meeting of the UN Security Council.
What a Palestinian state could be can be judged by the results of a poll conducted by the Palestinian Center for Political Research in Ramallah, which showed that 68 percent of the PA population is in favor of continuing rocket attacks on Israeli territory, 56 percent support Hamas, and half of the population would like to throw the Jews into the sea altogether. And these figures are still clearly underestimated, but in reality the situation is much worse. For example, in Ramallah, a monument was unveiled to the "national heroine" Dalal al-Mughrabi, who led the seizure of two Israeli buses with tourists on March 11, 1978. As a result, 39 people died, including 13 children.
What could afford, no, not just chosen, but the hypothetical leadership of Israel in a similar situation? Could it follow the example of the Al-Sisi government, which, regardless of anything, is destroying the underground infrastructure of Hamas, seeing it as a direct threat to its own security? During the reign of Al-Sisi, more than 1,700 tunnels were destroyed. A "dead zone" was created on the border of the Gaza Strip with Egypt. At the same time, the Egyptian part of the city of Rafah, adjacent to Gaza, was completely demolished.
Even being overdetermined, the hypothetical Israeli leadership could not create a "dead zone" on its southern, northern and eastern borders using the experience of the Egyptian government. This statement seems to be self-explanatory. The experience with the transfer of the territory of the Gaza Strip under the full control of the Palestinian bandits cannot serve as a positive example. And this is also an obvious fact. What remains is either the transfer or the destruction of terrorist regimes in territories that are still considered autonomies, and the establishment of Israeli jurisdiction over them with the subsequent creation of self-government bodies there.
What has changed in the world over the past 50 years since the inception of Fatah-OOP? First, the Soviet Union and its KGB have disappeared. His successor, the FSB in Putin's Russia, is inferior to him, primarily intellectually. Unfortunately, anti-Americanism is reviving, albeit in a different form: the ideological component has disappeared, to a large extent, and the struggle has acquired the character of rivalry.
Secondly, Egypt, which in the person of its then leader Gamal Abdel Nasser was another creator of the PLO, today has changed its attitude towards Israel, losing at the same time its interest in the "national liberation struggle of the Palestinian Arab people." Moreover, the Al-Sisi regime is a powerful obstacle to the spread of radical Islam.
What measures of the Israeli leadership in the new conditions could be considered adequate? Since Israel cannot afford the same effective fight against the tunnels, such as the one waged by Egypt, it means that it is necessary to destroy the tunnels themselves, despite the outrage of the world community. And the countries surrounding Israel today are not interested in keeping the PLO in the composition of both Fatah and Hamas.
But the Israeli leadership cannot agree to the use of such radical measures to combat the Palestinian bandits. As long as Israel remains a state of two hostile population groups, it will not be able to resolutely defend itself. Without determining the status of the state, it is impossible to ensure the required level of its protection. While the Arab party will occupy the third place in the Knesset, the Israeli police will prefer to fight Ethiopian, Russian and other Jews, trying to ignore the arbitrariness of the Arabs as much as possible.
This is seen as the root of all problems: either Israel is a Jewish state on the Jewish land, or Jews are aliens who colonized the indigenous population. The two answers correspond to two completely different strategies of behavior. In the first case - an irreconcilable struggle for their own security and prosperity; in the second case, half-measures, constant maneuvering with an eye to international public opinion. Unfortunately, the last elections revealed such a tendency: for the sake of the right to "lead the people", political parties are ready to abandon any ideological goals.
The media portray the Arab-Israeli conflict as a territorial dispute. It is often argued that the territory of the modern state of Israel was previously inhabited by Palestinian Arabs with a thousand-year history, who were forcibly expelled by the Zionists.
It was the Romans who, in the second century AD, introduced the name "Syria Palestine" for Jerusalem and its surrounding lands. This name was used incorrectly. In Greek, Palestine meant the homeland of the Philistines, but the Philistines lived exclusively on a narrow strip of coastline in the eastern Mediterranean, including what is now the Gaza Strip, and, moreover, they had ceased to exist several centuries before.
To understand how justified these claims are, it is necessary to understand the historical facts, which we will do right now.
The Romans conquered what was called the Kingdom of Judah, and they themselves called it "the Province of Judea." Both names implied the homeland of the Jewish people.
Why then did the Romans change the name to "Syria Palestine"? This is an important question.
Jewish society and religion revolved around the Law of Moses. According to the book of Exodus, the Law originated during the rebellion of the Jewish slaves in Egypt, and this explains the fact that the Law of Moses condemns oppression and protects the poor. That was what worried the Roman military aristocracy. In those days, a large number of Jews lived around the Mediterranean Sea. And the greatest fear of the Romans was that the popularity of the Law of Moses among the oppressed peoples of the Empire could result in revolt.
To avoid such a development of events, the Empire organized the massacres of Jews, which we know today as the First Jewish War, the Jewish Revolt, the Second Jewish War. Historians estimate that cumulatively and proportionally, the Romans probably killed more Jews than Adolf Hitler. When, after the destruction of Jerusalem, it was decided to commit genocide of the Jewish people, Emperor Hadrian settled Jerusalem with Greeks in the second century and, under pain of death, banned Jews from entering it. The city was renamed Elia Capitolina, and the entire area was renamed Syria Palestine. Politically, Palestine has come to mean: there are no Jews here, and we will not let them in here!
Some Jews persisted in living in the Holy Land, while others soon began to return. Informally, the Romans continued to call this land Judea. Centuries passed, the name Palestine was used less and less, until it ceased to have a clear definition at all. During the reign of the Turkish Ottoman Empire, which ruled over this territory since the 16th century, there was no such administrative or political entity as Palestine.
In the 20th century, after wresting the Middle East from Turkey during World War I, the British revived the name by creating the British Mandate in Palestine. But their final definition of the territory of Palestine in 1922 was only one-fourth of the entire territory that they had christened Palestine two years earlier.
Such arbitrariness confirms the complaint of the Arab historian Philip Hitty, who in 1946 testified before By the Anglo-American Committee on the Question of Palestine, that "in history, of course, there is no such thing as Palestine."
But if the name "Palestine" was artificially created by the Roman Empire and subsequently used by Britain, then who, then, are the so-called Palestinians? This question was answered by Zahir Muhsein, chief of operations for the Palestine Liberation Organization, or PLO, which is now known as the Palestinian Authority. In an interview with Dutch magazine, Trauv Muhsein explained:
“We are all part of ONE people - the Arab ... We are one people. Simply for political reasons, we carefully emphasize our Palestinian identity, because the national interest of the Arab people is evident here - the propaganda of the existence of the Palestinians will neutralize Zionism. "
“Yes, a separate Palestinian nationality as such exists only for tactical reasons. The founding of the Palestinian State is a new instrument that will allow the fight for Arab unity against Israel to continue. "
Why does Muhsein call this a new tool to continue the fight against Israel? War after war, the combined armies of various Arab Muslim states were defeated over and over again by tiny Israel, so a new tool was really needed. A military-political strategy is needed that would combine terrorism with diplomacy in order to achieve everything that open war cannot provide.
So, do Muhsein's words suggest that the Palestinian people with the so-called land right of the Jewish state ... were simply invented? The statutes of the Palestine Liberation Organization seem to confirm this.
In its first charter of 1964, the PLO in its second article defines Palestine in terms of the times of the British Mandate. This is a reference to Britain's second arbitrary definition from 1922. How can a foreign colonial power in the twentieth century arbitrarily define the boundaries of the supposedly ancestral lands of the Palestinians?
But in reality, the PLO did not even accept the British definition. In article 24, the PLO explicitly stated that Judea, Samaria and Gaza — the territories to which it now claims — are not Palestinian.
“Article 24: The Organization does not implement territorial sovereignty over the West Bank (Judea and Samaria) as part of the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan and over the Gaza Strip. "
In 1968, the PLO rewrote its charter, and this time the definition of the Palestinian borders did not exclude Gaza, Judea and Samaria, and the PLO now claimed these territories. What explains this change?
In 1964, when the PLO was drafting its first charter, Egypt illegally occupied Gaza and Jordan illegally occupied Judea and Samaria. Further, the Arab states provoked the 1967 war, or the six-day war, during which the Israelis, among other things, gained the territories of Gaza, Judea and Samaria. It was after these events that the PLO rewrote its constitution in 1968, this time calling Gaza, Judea and Samaria Palestinian Territories. Consequently, the borders of Palestine are flexible and it is not difficult to redraw them in such a way as to surround the territory controlled by Israel. In other words, the borders of Palestine are deliberately defined so that they can be used as a tool in the fight against Israel.
But if Palestine is a recent invention, as is Palestinian identity, then where did the Arab Muslims who now call themselves Palestinians come from?
Today, Israel is home to about 8 million people, and in the 19th century the population of this region, according to the most reliable estimate, was 300,000 people. The land was practically uninhabited - this is how the travelers of the 19th century describe it.
For example, in the mid-nineteenth century, the British consul complained that the region's population was small. When Mark Twain visited the land, he noted that there was not a single village in the Jezreel Valley within thirty miles. The French writer Pierre Loti wrote during his travels that the local cities and palaces had turned to dust.
In his historical research, Karl Hermann Voss explained all this as a result of the Arab-Muslim conquest. For twelve and a half centuries, from the Arab conquest in the seventh century to the return of the Jews in 1880, Palestine was ravaged and devastated, its ancient canals and irrigation systems destroyed, and the unprecedented fertility spoken of in the Bible was swallowed up in the desert. During the rule of the Ottoman Empire, the Turks continued their policy of disdain. Trees were cut down from the mountain slopes, and the valleys were stripped of the topsoil.
The few who lived there - who were they?
Muslims of various origins made up the majority, and some were in fierce confrontation with each other, but none of them were Palestinians. There were also small Jewish communities in large townships and Galilean villages, and many people lived in Jerusalem, Hebron, Safed and Tiberias. In Jerusalem, by the way, the Jewish population was the majority. A document from the British Consulate from 1859 reads:
"Muslims in Jerusalem do not exceed a quarter of the total population."
In 1878, two years before the arrival of Jewish settlers, the Ottoman sultan began to pursue his resettlement policy, bringing in foreign Muslims, mainly Circassians and Algerians, into the lands. Historian Arnold Bloomberg explains:
“After 1880, the forces of the nascent Jewish state,
Turkish-sponsored settlement by foreign Muslims and the spontaneous Arab immigration brought about by the new flourishing of Palestine changed the demographic face of this land. ”
Considering that huge waves of Muslim immigration began to arrive on essentially devastated lands since 1878, it is simply obvious that the vast majority of those who now call themselves Palestinians do not have millennial roots associated with this land.
The United Nations confirmed this by defining Palestinian refugees as any non-Jews who fled the country during the 1948 war and whose families have lived in the area for the past two years or more. Without such a definition, the number of so-called Palestinian refugees would practically be zero.
It is a well-known fact that the Jews settled in almost barren lands that no one used. Even King Abdullah of Transjordan, who in 1948 attempted to destroy the nascent Jewish state, wrote in 1946:
“I was amazed at what I saw in the Jewish settlements. They populated the sand dunes, extracted water from them and turned the dunes into a garden of paradise! "
The restoration of the land by Jews caused an economic explosion that attracted many Arabs from neighboring countries who came in search of a better life. They also added to the number of those who later began to call themselves Palestinians. And yet, many believe that the Jewish Zionists took the inhabited land by force. Was it really so? This question was answered by Haj Amin al-Husseini, the father of the Palestinian movement.
In 1936, Husseini, the Mufti of Jerusalem, tripled the fourth terrorist attack on the Jews of British-mandated Palestine. He called it the Arab uprising. The atrocities continued until 1939.
In 1937, the British government sent an entire group under the leadership of Lord Peel to investigate what was happening and its causes. Husseini was summoned as a witness.
Sir Laurie Hammond asked if the problem was related to the forcible seizure of Arab lands by Jews. Husseini replied: "In most cases, the land was acquired by them."
Sir Laurie Hammond: "I mean, were they acquired by force because the land was supposedly bought for public purposes?"
Husseini: "No, that was not the case."
Sir Laurie Hammond: "Was she not forcibly sold?"
Husseini: "No."
Sir Laurie Hammond: "That is, these lands, the area of which reaches seven hundred thousand dunams, in fact, were sold?"
Husseini: "Yes, they were sold, but the country was in such conditions that purchases of this kind were easy."
Sir Laurie Hammond: "I don't quite understand what you mean by 'they were sold'." Sold by whom? "
Husseini: The Landowners.
Sir Laurie Hammond: "Arabs?"
Husseini: "In most cases, by the Arabs."
Sir Laurie Hammond: “Did anyone coerce them into this sale? And if so, who? "
Husseini: “As in other countries, there are people who, due to circumstances and economic factors, sell their land.”
The Arab landowners who, according to Husseini, were forced to sell their land, were the effendi, important feudal rulers of the land. They did what they wanted to do — no one forced them to sell, and they sold their least productive agricultural land for a very high price.
Moreover, Husseini's own family, which belonged to the largest landowners - the Effendi, itself was a lively land trader. First, the Husseini family threatened small landowners with death if they dared to commit the so-called national crime by selling land to Jews, then they bought these plots at a bargain price, consolidated them and resold them to Jews at extortionate prices.
Historian Nathan Weinstock explains: "In other words, hypernational propaganda has become a lucrative industry, American-style racketeering for the Arab nobility."
In conclusion, let us say that all talk about the power of the original lands of the Palestinian people taken by the Jews, behind whose shoulders a thousand-year history, is a lie. Firstly, because there have never been any Palestinian people on this land and, secondly, because Jewish settlers bought these lands from Arab landowners who wanted to make a deal at prices significantly higher than market prices.
