![]() Our country was for centuries part of Syria." In 1937, a local Arab leader, Auni Bey Abdul-Hadi, told the Peel Commission, which ultimately suggested the partition of Palestine: "There is no such country ! 'Palestine' is a term the Zionists invented! There is no Palestine in the Bible. We are connected with it by national, religious, linguistic, natural, economic and geographical bonds. We consider Palestine as part of Arab Syria, as it has never been separated from it at any time. When the First Congress of Muslim-Christian Associations met in Jerusalem in February 1919 to choose Palestinian representatives for the Paris Peace Conference, the following resolution was adopted: Prior to partition, Palestinian Arabs did not view themselves as having a separate identity. Philip Hitti, testified against partition before the Anglo-American Committee in 1946, he said: "There is no such thing as 'Palestine' in history, absolutely not." ![]() When the distinguished Arab-American historian, Princeton University Prof. No independent Arab or Palestinian state ever existed in Palestine. Palestine was never an exclusively Arab country, although Arabic gradually became the language of most the population after the Muslim invasions of the seventh century. In fact, if not for foreign conquerors, Israel would be 3,000 years old today. This is much longer than Americans have enjoyed independence in what has become known as the United States. Jewish independence in the Land of Israel lasted for more than 400 years. The Jewish people enjoyed brief periods of sovereignty afterward before most Jews were finally driven from their homeland in 135 C.E. The nation was divided under Solomon's son, with the northern kingdom (Israel) lasting until 722 B.C.E., when the Assyrians destroyed it, and the southern kingdom (Judah) surviving until the Babylonian conquest in 586 B.C.E. David's son, Solomon built the Temple soon thereafter and consolidated the military, administrative and religious functions of the kingdom. The second king, David, established Jerusalem as the capital around 1000 B.C.E. The Hebrews entered the Land of Israel about 1300 B.C.E., living under a tribal confederation until being united under the first monarch, King Saul. The Arabic word "Filastin" is derived from this Latin name. In the second century C.E., after crushing the last Jewish revolt, the Romans first applied the name Palaestina to Judea (the southern portion of what is now called the West Bank) in an attempt to minimize Jewish identification with the land of Israel. The term "Palestine" is believed to be derived from the Philistines, an Aegean people who, in the 12th Century B.C.E., settled along the Mediterranean coastal plain of what are now Israel and the Gaza Strip. This area included what we call today the country of Jordan which became closed to Jewish settlement in 1921. Palestine has never been a state or nation but rather a geographical area that consisted of Jews and Arabs. Seemingly there are not enough deaths for them, so Hamas's military wing, the al-Qassam Brigades, has been busy sending out pictures of massacres in Syria, claiming they were taken in Gaza. ![]() Death and destruction is seen as a win-win calculation, as any Israeli death is considered a glorious achievement and every Palestinian death that of a "holy martyr", providing badly needed propaganda locally and internationally. The Hamas are cowards, they launch rockets from built-up civilian areas such as kindergartens, schools, mosques and hospitals and store rocket supplies there knowing full well that it would be hard for Israel to counter attack without drawing criticism for civilian casualties and garnering Western sympathy. People tend to view this conflict in a narrow frame of mind, crying foul at "children dying" and failing to see the greater picture. Palestine conflict and how Israel is not the Goliath made out to be and has complete justification for its actions. Please see my comments below for some facts about the recent Israel vs. When it comes to war, context is king in the vast billows of propaganda. It continually brings me great grief that we live in an age of misinformation, propagated by the double-edged sword of the mass media and Internet, where many people believe in a convenient truth.
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