Israel’s Historical Rights to the Land
Aliyah!
Jews lived in their Land virtually uninterrupted for 1,700
years until Rome destroyed Israel’s polity in CE 70 and CE 135.
The archeological discovery of the Merneptah Stela which
describes an attack on ancient Israel confirms Israel’s ancient
presence in the Land. By CE 70, Josephus, the Roman Emperor’s
official historian, observed that 4-7 million Jews dwelt in Israel.
(Wars VI, 420, 425). Roman slaughter and expulsion decimated
these Jewish inhabitants. Then Christian, Persian, Arab,
Crusader, Mameluke and
Turkish armies devastated the Holy
Land and ruled temporarily. Still some Jews clung to their Land.
Jews have been the continuous indigenous people of the Holy
Land for about 3,600 years.
Arabs ruled the Holy Land for only 22 years during the
period C
E 633-1099. (Syrian Delegation to Paris Peace
Conference, Feb. 1919.) The Arab historian Ibn Khaldun
observed that as late as CE 1400 the Land was permeated with
Jewish culture. Over 300 years after Arab rule ended, there was
still no evidence of Arab Palestinian roots or established culture.
T
hus, the noted Arab historian denies the false claim of an
uninterrupted Palestinian culture dating back to CE 636.
James Parkes in his Whose Land? states, “It is not until the
Turkish period, CE 1517-1917, that in the ethnic sense it [the
Holy Land] acquired a substantial Arab, [though] not majority,
population….” How? By immigration, not by natural population
growth. At the same time (CE 1561) Sultan Suleiman, a Muslim,
granted Joseph Nasi the right to found the “kernel of a JewishState” in
Tiberias and seven villages surrounded by a wall
(Germany, Turkey, Zionism, 1897-1918 p.22). As a result thousands
of Jews immigrated to the Land in a wave of Messianic fervor.
In the 1700s and 1800s noted travelers observed the Holy
Land was a barren waste. Its greatest lack was a “body of
population.” Finally, the Biblical ingathering of the Jewish exiles
began. (Jeremiah 16:14,15) This triggered a large Arab
immigration hoping to benefit from the growing Jewish
economy. Both British Prime Minister MacDonald and President
Roosevelt confirmed that this was the reason for the flood of
Arab immigration since 1918.
To defend British policy, the not overly-Jewish-friendly
British Secretary of State for the colonies, Malcolm MacDonald,
declared in the House of Commons (November 24, 1938):
“The Arabs cannot say that the Jews are driving them out of
the country. If not a single Jew had come to Palestine after 1918,
I believe the Arab population of Palestine would still have been
around 600,000....”
Jewish contributions and Jewish immigration continued to
flow into the Land. The Jews created industry, agriculture,
hospitals—a complete socio-economic infrastructure. As job
opportunities increased, so did Arab immigration. In fact, in 1939
President Roosevelt observed that “Arab immigration into
Palestine since 1921 has vastly exceeded the total Jewish
immigration during this whole period.” For one specific
example, i
n 1934 between 30,000 and 36,000 Arabs from the
Hauran Province in Syria left for “the better life” in Palestine.
The flood continued until 1948. Some writers claim that 75
percent of the Arab population was either immigrants into the
Holy Land after 1882 or their descendants (Justice For My
People, 1943, p. 130).
Tens of thousands of Arabs were entering
to obtain a better life.
Town Names Betray Their True History
Yoram Ettinger, a former liaison for Congressional affairs in
Israel’s Washington embassy, lists evidence showing that Judea and Samaria has Jewish, not Arab, roots. He says almost all Arab
localities in Judea and Samaria have retained Biblical Jewish
names, reaffirming their Jewish roots. Examples include the
following:
- A Anata is the biblical and contemporary Anatot, the dwelling of the Prophet Jeremiah.
- A Batir is the biblical and contemporary Beitar, the headquarters of Bar Kochba, the leader of the Great Rebellion against the Roman Empire, which was suppressed in 135 CE.
- A Beit-Hur is the biblical and contemporary Beit Horon, site of Judah the Maccabee’s victory over the Assyrians.
- A Beitin is the biblical and contemporary Beit El, a site of the Holy Ark and Prophet Samuel’s court. A Bethlehem is mentioned 44 times in the Bible and is the birth place of King David.
- A Beit Jalla is the biblical and contemporary Gilo, in southern Jerusalem, where Sennacherib set his camp while besieging Jerusalem. A El-Jib is the biblical and contemporary Gibeon, Joshua’s battleground known for his command to stop the sun and moon (Joshua 10:12).
- A Jaba’ is the biblical and contemporary Geva, site of King Saul’s son Jonathan’s victory over the Philistines. A Jenin is the biblical and contemporary Ein Ganim, a Levite town within the tribe of Issachar.
- A Mukhmas is the biblical and contemporary Mikhmash, residence of Jonathan the Maccabee and site of King Saul’s fortress.
- A Seilun is the biblical and contemporary Shilo, a site of Joshua’s tabernacle and the Holy Ark and Samuel’s youth.
- A Tequa is the biblical and contemporary Tekoa, hometow n of the Prophet Amos.
The Palestinian Claim
The Palestinian claim that the Land for centuries sustained a
thriving Palestinian culture is not authorized by the facts of
histor
y. Yet the world community has given this claim a receptive
hearing. PLO Chairman
Yassir Arafat in his speech before the
U.N. in 1974 declared, “The Jewish invasion began in 1881...
Palestine was then a verdant area, inhabited mainly by an Arab
people in the course of building its life and dynamically
enrichin
g its indigenous culture.”
What happens when this claim is compared with the personal
observations of the following recognized authorities? In 1738
Thomas Shaw observed a land of “barrenness...from want of
inhabitants.” In 1785 Constantine Francois de
Volney recorded
the population of the three main cities. Jerusalem had a
population of 12,000 to 14,000. Bethlehem had about 600
able-bodied men. Hebron had 800 to 900 men. In 1835 Alphonse
de Lamartine wrote, “Outside the city of Jerusalem, we saw no
living object, heard no living sound... a complete eternal silence
reigns in the town, in the highways, in the country....the tomb of
a whole people.”
In 1857 the British consul in Palestine, James Finn, reported,
“The country is in a considerable degree empty of inhabitants and
therefore its greatest need is that of a body of population.”
This historic observation is a remarkable confirmation of the
Biblical predictions that during Israel’s “double” period of
punishment and dispersion, the Lord would cause the Land to
become desolate of man and beast (Jeremiah 33:10; Zechariah
9:12; Jeremiah 16:14-18). No wonder by 1857 it was just waiting
for “a body of population”! In the Lord’s providence this
needed body of population
—the Jewish people—began to
return after 1878 at the end of their Scriptural period of God’s
disfavor. (See the following wasteland pictures from 1862-1920.)
The most popular quote on the desolation of the Land is from
Mark Twain’s THE INNOCENTS
ABROAD (1867):
 |
| Esdraelon Valley—1894 |
 |
| Tel Aviv—1909 |
 |
| Genneseret—1890 |
“Palestine sits in sackcloth and ashes. Over it broods the
spell of a curse that has withered its fields and fettered its
energies....Palestine is desolate and unlovely....It is a
hopeless, dreary, heartbroken land.”
The records of history confirm the Biblical predictions that
during the Jewish dispersion and “double” of God’s disfavor, the
Land of Israel would become desolate awaiting the return of the
Jewish people when its period of disfavor ended in 1878. The
records of history simply do not confirm today’s Palestinian
claim of Palestinian roots and culture in a “verdant area” since
the Arab rule of the Land (CE 640-1099).
Southern Syria vs. “Palestine”
The Romans changed the name of the Land of Israel to
“Palestine.” But from CE 640 until the 1960s, Arabs referred to
this same Land as “Southern Syria.” Arabs only began calling
the Land “Palestine” in the 1960s. Until about the eighteenth
century, the Christian world called this same Land, “The Holy
Land.” Thereafter, they used two names: “The Holy Land” and
“Palestine.”
In 1922 when the League of Nations gave Great Britain the
mandate to prepare Palestine as a national home for the Jewish
people, the official name of the Land became “Palestine” and
remained so until the rebirth of the Israeli State in 1948.
However, during this very period, the leaders of the Arabs in the
Land called themselves Southern Syrians and clamored that the
Land become a part of a “Greater Syria.” This “Arab Nation”
would include Syria, Lebanon, Iraq, and
Transjordan as well as
Palestine. An observation in
Time magazine well articulated how
the Palestinian identity was born so belatedly in the 1960s:
Golda Meir once argued that there was no such thing as a
Palestinian; at the time, she wasn’t entirely wrong. Before
Arafat began his proselytizing, most of the Arabs from the
territory of Palestine thought of themselves as members of
an all-embracing Arab nation. It was Arafat who madethe intellectual leap to a definition of the Palestinians as
a distinct people; he articulated the cause, organized for it,
fought for it and brought it to the world’s attention. . . .
If there had been an Arab Palestinian culture, a normal
population increase over the centuries would have been
expected. But, with the exception of a relatively few families, the
Arabs had no attachment to the Land. If Arabs from southern
Syria drifted into Palestine for economic reasons, within a
generation or so the cultural tug of Syria or other Arab lands
would pull them back. This factor is why the Arab population
average remained low until the influx of Jewish financial
investments and Jewish people in the late 1800s made the Land
economically attractive. Then sometime between 1850 and 1918,
the Arab population shot up to 560,000.
On the other hand, Great Britain’s White Paper of 1939 closed
the doors of Jewish immigration to their Land. Simultaneously,
there was a large-scale Arab immigration to the new Land of
opportunity during World War II. In 1946 Bartley C. Crum, a
United States Government observer, noted that tens of thousands
of Arabs had entered Palestine “because of this better life—and
they were still coming.”
The Testimony of Arabs and Christians
Because Arabs until the 1960s spoke of Palestine as Southern
Syria or part of Greater Syria, in 1919 the General Syrian
Congress stated, “We ask that there should be no separation of the
southern part of Syria, known as Palestine.” In 1939 George
Antonius noted the Arab view of Palestine in 1918:
Faisal’s views about the future of Palestine did not differ
from those of his father and were identical with those
held then by the great majority of politically-minded
Arabs. The representative Arab view was substantially
that which King Husain [Grand Sherif of Mecca, the
great grandfather of the current King Hussein of Jordan]had expressed to the British Government...in January
1918. In the Arab view, Palestine was an Arab territory
forming an integral part of Syria.
Referring to the same Arab view of Palestine in 1939, George
Antonius spoke of “the whole of the country of that name [Syria]
which is now split up into mandated territories....” His lament
was that France’s mandate over Syria did not include Palestine
which was under Britain’s mandate.
As late as May 1947, Arab representatives reminded the
United Nations in a formal statement, “Palestine is a...part of the
Province of Syria....Politically, the Arabs of Palestine were not
independent in the sense of forming a separate political entity.”
On May 31, 1956, Ahmed Shukairy had no hesitation, as
current head of the Palestine Liberation Organization, in
announcing to the Security Council the observation, “It is
common knowledge that Palestine is nothing but southern
Syria.”
Syrian President Hafez Assad once told PLO leader Yassir
Arafat:
You do not represent Palestine as much as we do. Never
forget this one point: There is no such thing as a
Palestinian People, there is no Palestinian entity, there is
only Syria. You are an integral part of the Syrian People,
Palestine is an integral part of Syria. Therefore it is we, the
Syrian authorities, who are the true representatives of the
Palestinian people.
Assad stated on March 8, 1974, “Palestine is a principal part
of Southern Syria, and we consider that it is our right and duty to
insist that it be a liberated partner of our Arab homeland and of
Syria.”
In the words of the late military commander of the PLO as
well as member of the PLO Executive Council, Zuhair
Muhsin:There are no differences between Jordanians, Palestinians,
Syrians and Lebanese. We are all part of one nation. It is
only for political reasons that we carefully underline our
Palestinian identity….yes, the existence of a separate
Palestinian identity serves only tactical purposes. The
founding of a Palestinian state is a new tool in the
continuing battle against Israel [emphasis ours].
The most authoritative Arab statement, however, as to whom
the Holy Land belongs is found in the Koran, the Islamic
Scriptures. The fact is that the Koran agrees with the Bible that
God (Allah) made a covenant with the Sons of Israel and
assigned the Holy Land to the Jews (see the Koran, Sura V, “The
Table”). The Koran also describes the Land given to the Jews as
“blessed” and foresees a return of Israel to their Land at the end
of days.
These testimonies confirm the Christian Scriptures that God
gave the Land to the Jewish people as an everlasting possession.
The relatively few Arabs who wandered into the Land between
CE 670-1878 were but temporary dwellers. The truer perspective
of history reveals that the large recent influx of Arabs that
paralleled the regathering of Jews has no historic roots in the
Land.
The Verdict of History: Land Rights
Before Jewish immigration and Jewish investments spawned
massive Arab immigration, Arabs were actually leaving
Palestine. Then the flow of traffic reversed. “...Palestine
changed from a country of Arab emigration to one of Arab
immigration. Arabs from the Hauran in Syria as well as other
neighboring lands poured into Palestine to profit from the higher
standard of living and fresh opportunities provided by the Zionist
pioneers.” This phenomenon is confirmed by the Palestine Royal
Commission Report which observed that in the period between
the Balfour Declaration and the United Nations Partition
Resolution of 1947, Palestine became a land of Arab immigration. As further documented by Ernst
Frankenstein, substantial Arab immigration was a recent
phenomenon:
The early “lovers of Zion” began the stimulation of Arab
immigration. Some writers have come out with the
conclusion that in 1942, 75 percent of the Arab population
were either immigrants or descendants of immigrants into
Palestine during the preceding one hundred years, mainly
after 1882.
WHOSE LAND? The Arabs ruled the Land for less than
100 years. The Jews ruled the Land of Israel for over 1,700
years. The testimony of history proves the Jewish people are
the historic people of the land, therefore the Land still
belongs to them.
Regardless of the peace process, the Judeo-Christian Bible
(Isaiah 2:2,3) and Muslim Koran (Sura 17:104), predict the
Jewish people will yet peacefully enjoy the right to all their
Land.
No comments:
Post a Comment