Palestine (region)

• 1. Introduction

  ›

  Palestine sits at the meeting point of three continents, wedged between Egypt, Syria, and Arabia, and for at least five thousand years every empire that reached for the wider world has had to pass through it or fight for it. It is the birthplace of Judaism and Christianity. It gave the world the Dome of the Rock, completed in 691, the first great work of Islamic architecture. Its name appears in the Histories of Herodotus in the 5th century BCE, in Assyrian tablets going back to around 800 BCE, and in Egyptian temple inscriptions from the reign of Ramesses III. Soldiers, pilgrims, merchants, refugees, and conquerors have all left marks on the land and on each other.

  How did a relatively small strip of coastal and highland territory accumulate this weight of meaning? What forces shaped the name itself, and why does that name remain contested today? Those are the questions this documentary sets out to answer.

• 2. The Name and Its Origins

  ›

  The temple at Medinet Habu carries what is believed to be the earliest surviving Egyptian mention of the Peleset, a neighboring people recorded among those who fought Egypt during the reign of Ramesses III. That inscription dates to around 1150 BCE. Four more Egyptian inscriptions follow it, and seven Assyrian records, beginning with Adad-nirari III's Nimrud Slab around 800 BCE, use variants such as Palashtu and Pilistu. None of these early sources drew clear regional boundaries.

  Herodotus was the first to apply the name to the entire stretch of territory between Phoenicia and Egypt. Writing in the 5th century BCE, he described a district of Syria called Palaistine that took in the Judaean mountains and the Jordan Rift Valley. Aristotle picked up the same usage roughly a century later in his Meteorology, and extended it to include the Dead Sea. After that, the name passed through the hands of Greek geographers, Roman poets, and Jewish scholars: Polemon, Pausanias, Ovid, Tibullus, Pliny the Elder, Philo of Alexandria, and Josephus all used it in ways that largely agreed with Herodotus.

  The word itself almost certainly derives from Peleshet, the biblical Hebrew name for Philistia, a coastal state that existed in the region from the 12th to the 7th century BCE. The term and its derivatives appear more than 250 times in Masoretic-derived versions of the Hebrew Bible, with roughly 200 of those appearances in the Book of Judges and the Books of Samuel alone. One theory holds that the name is a portmanteau blending the Greek word for Philistines with palaistes, meaning wrestler, rival, or adversary. The parallel with Israel is intentional: part of the etymological meaning of Israel also involves wrestling.

  The most consequential act of naming came from Rome. After suppressing the Bar Kokhba revolt during 132-136 CE, the Roman authorities renamed the province of Judaea to Syria Palaestina around 135 CE. This was, by one account, the only time in Roman history that an empire renamed a province specifically in response to a rebellion. The intent, some scholars argue, was to permanently sever the connection between the Jewish people and their ancestral land, replacing a name rooted in Jewish identity with one drawn from their old coastal rivals. Circumstantial evidence links the emperor Hadrian to the decision, but the precise date remains uncertain.

• 3. Ancient Layers

  ›

  Tell es-Sakan on the Mediterranean coast holds the distinction of being the oldest known fortified Egyptian settlement in the southern Levant. During the late 4th millennium BCE, in the Early Bronze Age, Egypt maintained permanent communities there while its presence elsewhere in the region remained seasonal. Independent Canaanite city-states emerged through the Bronze Age, drawing influence from Egypt, Mesopotamia, Phoenicia, Minoan Crete, and Syria. Between 1550 and 1400 BCE those cities became vassals to the Egyptian New Kingdom, a relationship that held until the Battle of Djahy in 1178 BCE and the wider Bronze Age collapse.

  The Egyptian Onomasticon of Amenope, compiled around 1100 BCE, lists Gaza, Isdud, and Asqalan among cities associated with the Philistines, marking the first clear evidence of the Philistine pentapolis: five city-states, each governed by a king, that maintained a degree of independence for roughly 550 years even when larger empires moved in overhead.

  The Israelites, according to current archaeological theory, did not arrive from outside. They appear to have emerged from a social transformation within the hill country of Canaan around 1200 BCE, with no clear evidence of military invasion or even a distinct ethnic migration from elsewhere. Two kingdoms eventually took form: Israel in the north, which fell to the Neo-Assyrian Empire in 722 BCE, and Judah in the south, which survived as a client state before being destroyed in 586 BCE when Nebuchadnezzar II besieged Jerusalem, razed it, and exiled the Judaeans to Babylon. The Philistines were also exiled at this time.

  In 539 BCE the Achaemenid Empire defeated Babylon. The Hebrew Bible and the Cyrus Cylinder both suggest that the exiled Jews were eventually permitted to return to Jerusalem. The returned population governed themselves under Persian oversight in a province called Yehud. Around them lay at least four other Persian provinces: Samaria, Gaza, Ashdod, and Ascalon. The Edomites migrated during this period from Transjordan into the southern parts of Judea, a region that became known as Idumaea. The Qedarites, the dominant Arab tribe, held territory running from the Hejaz in the south all the way to the Negev in the north throughout the Persian and Hellenistic periods.

• 4. Rome, Revolt, and Religion

  ›

  Pompey conquered Judea in 63 BCE, splitting the former Hasmonean Kingdom into five districts. Around 40 BCE the Parthians briefly seized Palestine, deposing Rome's ally Hyrcanus II and installing Antigonus II as a puppet ruler. The Parthians withdrew by 37 BCE, restoring Roman control.

  Palestine is generally described as the cradle of Christianity. The three-year Ministry of Jesus, culminating in his crucifixion, is estimated to have taken place from 28 to 30 CE, though the historicity of Jesus is disputed by a minority of scholars. What is not disputed is the scale of what followed. During the First Jewish-Roman War, which lasted from 66 to 73 CE, the Romans razed Jerusalem and destroyed the Second Temple. At Masada, Jewish zealots reportedly chose death over Roman captivity.

  The Bar Kokhba revolt, which began in 132 CE, was even more costly. The historian Dio Cassius recorded that Roman military operations left some 580,000 Jews dead, with many more dying of hunger and disease. Fifty of the most important outposts and 985 of the most famous villages were razed. The center of Jewish life in Palestine shifted north to the Galilee. Jerusalem was rebuilt as a Roman colony named Aelia Capitolina, and Jews were forbidden from entering the area surrounding it.

  Christianity's institutional arrival came later. Following Constantine's victory in the civil wars of the Tetrarchy, his mother Saint Helena visited Jerusalem in 326 and began constructing churches and shrines. Palestine became a center of Christian religious life, drawing monks and scholars. In 390, during the Byzantine period, the region was divided into three administrative provinces: Palaestina Prima, Palaestina Secunda, and Palaestina Salutaris. In 614 CE the Sassanids seized the territory, but Byzantine control was restored by 628 CE.

• 5. Caliphates and Crusaders

  ›

  The Rashidun Caliphate began its conquest of Palestine in 634 CE. Two years later, at the Battle of Yarmouk in 636, Muslim forces broke Byzantine military power in the region. Palestine became the military district of Jund Filastin within the larger province of Bilad al-Sham. In 661, following the assassination of Ali, Muawiyah I was crowned Caliph in Jerusalem, and the Dome of the Rock was completed in 691 as the world's first great work of Islamic architecture.

  For several decades after the conquest, social and administrative life continued much as before. The majority of the population remained Christian. The Umayyad caliphate spurred economic recovery before being replaced by the Abbasids in 750. Ramla became the administrative center of Palestine for the following centuries, while Tiberias grew into a centre of Muslim scholarship. From 878, the region was governed from Egypt by a succession of semi-autonomous rulers, beginning with Ahmad ibn Tulun, a Turkish freedman for whom both Jews and Christians prayed when he lay dying. Reverence for Jerusalem intensified, and many Egyptian rulers chose to be buried there.

  The Fatimids seized Palestine in 970, a date the sources describe as marking the start of a period of near-continuous warfare that devastated the region and its Jewish population in particular. Between 1071 and 1073 the Great Seljuq Empire took the territory, only for the Fatimids to recapture it in 1098. Within a year the Crusaders arrived.

  The Crusaders took Jerusalem in 1099 and established the Kingdom of Jerusalem, which endured until Saladin's forces defeated them in 1187. During the nearly century of Crusader control, the population of Palestine had been predominantly Christian; after Saladin's conquest, it became predominantly Muslim and remained so. A second Crusader presence based in Acre held on from 1191 to 1291. The Fourth Crusade, which never reached Palestine, hastened the decline of the Byzantine Empire, reducing Christian influence across the wider region. In the 13th century the Mamluk Sultanate, formed in Egypt partly as a result of the Seventh Crusade, inherited the region. The Mongols reached Palestine for the first time in 1260, advancing under the Nestorian Christian general Kitbuqa, before being halted at the Battle of Ain Jalut by the Mamluks.

• 6. Ottoman Rule and Late Transformations

  ›

  Hostilities between the Mamluks and the Ottoman Empire began in 1486, and the Ottomans took Palestine in 1516. For roughly the next century and a half, three local dynasties governed the territory on behalf of the Ottoman court: the Ridwans of Gaza, the Turabays of al-Lajjun, and the Farrukhs of Nablus.

  In the 18th century, Daher al-Umar of the Zaydani clan built Acre into a major regional power by monopolizing the cotton and olive oil trade between Palestine and Europe. His successor Ahmad Pasha al-Jazzar extended Acre's dominance further at the expense of Damascus. In 1830, the Ottoman government transferred control of the sanjaks of Jerusalem and Nablus to Abdullah Pasha, the governor of Acre. Two years later, Muhammad Ali's Egypt conquered Palestine, but the occupation triggered a countrywide popular uprising in 1834 against conscription and other intrusive measures. Britain intervened in 1840 and restored the Levant to Ottoman control.

  From the 1860s, Palestine underwent rapid socio-economic change as it became more tightly integrated into European trade networks. The main beneficiaries were Arabic-speaking Muslims and Christians who formed a new layer of the Arab elite. Along the southern coastal plain, Palestinian villagers developed a distinctive agricultural practice known as mawasi: sunken-garden systems carved into sandy dunefields that supported vineyards, figs, olives, and vegetables, transforming formerly marginal landscapes.

  From 1880, large-scale Jewish immigration began, coming almost entirely from Europe and driven by an explicitly Zionist ideology. Hebrew language and culture experienced a parallel revival. Christian Zionism in the United Kingdom had preceded this movement within the Jewish community, and the British government publicly endorsed Jewish settlement in Palestine with the Balfour Declaration of 1917.

• 7. The Modern Conflict

  ›

  The British began their Sinai and Palestine campaign in 1915. By December 1917 they had secured Jerusalem. The League of Nations formally awarded Britain the mandate to govern Palestine in 1922. Arab Palestinians rioted in 1920, 1921, and 1929, and launched a full revolt in 1936. After World War II and the Holocaust, the British government announced its intention to end the Mandate. In November 1947 the United Nations General Assembly passed Resolution 181(II), recommending partition into an Arab state, a Jewish state, and an international zone for Jerusalem. Civil war broke out immediately. The State of Israel was declared in May 1948.

  In the 1948 Arab-Israeli War, Israel captured an additional 26% of the Mandate territory beyond what the partition plan had allotted it. Jordan took Judea and Samaria, renaming the territory the West Bank. Egypt took the Gaza Strip. The 700,000 Palestinians who fled or were expelled during what became known as al-Nakba were not permitted to return following the Lausanne Conference of 1949.

  The Six-Day War in June 1967 brought the remaining Mandate territories under Israeli military occupation. Israel subsequently began establishing Jewish settlements in those territories. The First Intifada, which ran from 1987 to 1993, included the Declaration of the State of Palestine in 1988 and concluded with the Oslo Accords and the creation of the Palestinian National Authority. The Second Intifada, also called the al-Aqsa Intifada, began in 2000. Israel withdrew settlers and military forces from the Gaza Strip in 2005 but maintained control of its borders, airspace, and coastline. Israel's military occupation of the Gaza Strip, the West Bank, and East Jerusalem is described as the world's longest military occupation in modern times.

  In 2008, Palestinian hikaye was inscribed on UNESCO's list of intangible cultural heritage, the first of four such listings. In November 2012, the United Nations upgraded the status of the Palestinian delegation to non-member observer state. Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas, in a speech to the United Nations in September 2011, described the State of Palestine as representing 22% of the territory of historical Palestine, defined as the land held under the British Mandate.