A Quick History of Palestine

By Scott Ewalt
Harmony, MN

Mr. Erding needs to re-examine his reading of the history of Palestine. The area of Palestine and the indigenous people of Palestine have been a part of history for nearly 4,000 years as a semi-autonomous area within many occupying empires (Assyrian, Egyptian, Greek, Roman, Byzantine, Arab, Ottoman and others). It has been an important trading center with a rich tradition of universities for a good share of the time. There was a brief period of time in the late 18th and early 19th century when there was a Palestinian state, when it carried out its own independent foreign policy with several European states. After WWI, with the breakup of the Ottoman Empire, the European colonial powers drew boundaries in the Middle East with little regard to the actual people of the area. At the time of the Balfour Declaration, which encouraged the establishment of an area for the Jewish people, the Jewish population of the area was only about 6%. Several Zionist organizations in Europe encouraged Jews to move to Palestine and by the late 1930s, their population had swelled to nearly 40%.

Leading up to WWII the British provided weapons and training to the Jews to help in the war effort. Various Zionist organizations used these weapons to terrorize the indigenous Palestinians. By the time of the creation of the state of Israel by the United Nations and the aftermath of the 1947-1948 war, a million Palestinians had been killed, removed from their land and homes and forced into exile. Many of their villages had been bulldozed to the ground.

Meanwhile, many of the Palestinian leaders who had the authority and support of the Palestinian people were assassinated by Zionist terrorists. The Arab countries that did negotiate with Israel had their own agendas and the Palestinians were not a top priority. This pattern continues through the 1967 war and today with creation of Israeli settlements in the West Bank and the destruction in Gaza.