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Where Did the Name "Palestine" Come From?

(Israel Hayom) Amb. Dror Eydar - In 135 CE, the Roman suppression of the revolt of the Jews resulted in many Roman casualties. Emperor Hadrian, angered by the Jews, ordered the "erasure from memory" of the name "Judah" and decreed that the land be called "Palaestina," assuming that the Jews would forget their homeland and cease to rebel. However, the peoples who lived there during history were not referred to as "Palestinians." Since the Arab conquest in 638 CE, there has never been any mention in Arabic or Islamic literature of a distinct Palestinian people with their own identity or a defined country. At the San Remo Conference in April 1920, the leaders of the victorious powers of World War I decided to grant 99% of the territory, which had previously belonged to the Ottoman Empire, to the Arab peoples. The remaining 1% was awarded to the Jewish people, and Britain was tasked with fulfilling the Balfour Declaration regarding the establishment of a national home for the Jewish people in "Palestine - Land of Israel." When British Prime Minister Lloyd George was asked about the boundaries of "Palestine," he opened an atlas and pointed to a map of "Palestine under David and Solomon," which spanned both sides of the Jordan River. "This belongs to the Jews," he said. Between 1870 and 1878, British surveyors conducted a detailed "Survey of Palestine." Jerusalem had a solid Jewish majority. The estimated Arab population of the land at the time was around 100,000. In an interview with the Dutch newspaper Trouw (March 1977), the head of the terror group As-Sa'iqa, PLO Executive Committee member Zuhair Mohsen, stated: "The Palestinian people does not exist. The creation of a Palestinian state is a new tool in the ongoing struggle against Israel for the purposes of Arab unity. Realistically, there is no difference between Jordanians, Palestinians, Syrians, and Lebanese. Just for political reasons we carefully underwrite our Palestinian identity, because it is of national interest for the Arabs to advocate the existence of Palestinians to balance Zionism." This is the power of propaganda: a recently invented collective can deny the national identity of one of the oldest peoples in the world, who already in the 10th century BCE had a kingdom in their homeland, where Saul, David, and Solomon ruled. Yet the world ignorantly believes that before the establishment of Israel, there was a Palestinian state here. The writer is a former Israeli ambassador to Italy.
2024-08-25 00:00:00
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