WHAT IS PALESTINE

Confusion about Palestine derives in no small part from the fact that Palestine had neither political nor geographical definition prior to the twentieth century. It still does not. There was never a Palestinian state. Whatever Palestine was and wherever it was, generally depended upon individual interpretation. Different portions of the general area had some kind of designation as "Palestine" during the centuries of Roman and Byzantine rule. As part of these empires the function of the areas variously delineated as "Palestine" changed haphazardly, just as the boundaries did, to accommodate local rulers and administrative needs. Beginning with the era of Arab-Islamic rule Palestine was considered part of Bilad al-Sham or Greater Syria.

Jews of the diaspora preferred "Eretz Israel," Land of Israel, and eschewed the use of the term Palestine that did not recognize their claim to the land as their gift from God. Western Christians, who fought crusades to liberate it from Muslims, generally referred to the region as the Holy Land and actually held a great deal of the region as the Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem, not Palestine, for two centuries.

The people who lived there had little reason to think of themselves as Palestinians until the beginning of the twentieth century. All of them were Ottoman subjects and for centuries any specific identification was usually confined to family and religious affiliation. The predominantly Arab population knew they were not Turks, but since most were Sunni Muslims, they historically did not differentiate between themselves and their Turkish fellow believers. In addition, until the twentieth century there was no significant Arab nationalism with which they could identify. The roughly 15 percent Christian Arab population preserved both their freedoms and limitations through compliance with Ottoman traditions. They, too, had no viable alternative identity, although the Christian western nations interceded in behalf of all Ottoman Christians throughout the nineteenth century. The situation of the smaller Jewish population was similar to that of the Christian Arabs, except there was no Jewish state anywhere to protect or succor it.

Zionists had the clearest concept of the area the Christians called Palestine. For them "Eretz Israel" reached from the Sinai peninsula to the north central Euphrates area east of Damascus; the furthest extent of King David's conquests about 1000 B.C. No Israeli state, before or since, equalled David's brief territorial expansion. No Israeli state of any kind existed from 135 A.D. to 1948. But the halcyon borders in David's time were the perimeters most Zionists envisioned as the land the Balfour Declaration of 1917 promised them as a "national home." The League of Nations mandate seemed to imply that Palestine, indeed, extended to somewhere near the Euphrates, because Article 25 referred to "territories lying between the Jordan and the eastern borders of Palestine."

Britain's creation of the Emirate of Transjordan in 1921, therefore, was a major blow to Zionist plans. Many, however, never altered their goals and most continued to regard Transjordan as an integral part of their patrimony. But, in fact, the British had defined Palestine for modern purposes as the land east of Egypt's Sinai peninsula, south of French mandatory Syria and Lebanon, and west of Transjordan along the west bank of the Jordan River straight southward to the northern tip of the Gulf of Aqaba.

Regardless of previous attitudes, the indigenous population within these new borders rapidly assumed the identification of "Palestinian." While many Palestinians before this time might have accepted the label of Syrian, French control over Syria and British control over Palestine made identification with Syria less viable. Some Palestinians did, however, increase their hope for a Greater Syrian Arab state at the end of the mandate nightmare. As the King‑Crane findings and other evidence indicates most Arabs in the region envisioned an affiliation with Damascus in the absence of their Turkish overlords. No Palestinians had a sense of being Lebanese and, in fact, most regarded Lebanon, like Palestine, as a part of Syria. Palestinian Arabs had no sense of affiliation with Transjordan and its dusty capital of Amman. The sparse population of that emirate was, after all, primarily bedouin nomads, while the Palestinians were mostly farmers and town dwellers. Affinity with Iraq was equally untenable as it was hundreds of desert miles to the east and less well developed than the western Levant.

Nearly half of the 10,000 square miles of Palestine is barren and unable to support substantial population without extraordinary efforts to supply it with water. Like the area to its north on the eastern Mediterranean Sea, most of the coastal area of Palestine is fertile and extends eastward to the northern Jordan River valley in the east. In this area large‑scale farming of a wide variety of crops, including citrus, is possible and lends itself to the use of the most modern machinery. The central highlands are rocky but provide a favorable condition for grapes, olives, and small‑scale farming of grains and vegetables. There is ample water for a modest population that generally must rely on hand tools and animal power to cultivate the crops. The Jericho region in the Jordan River valley, which is the lowest place on earth, enjoys a tropical climate that is particularly good for the cultivation of dates and bananas. From just east of Jerusalem to the Dead Sea is a rugged wasteland that can sustain a handful of nomads and their flocks. The Negev desert, which constitutes nearly 40 percent of modern Palestine, stretches south of Beersheba to the Gulf of Aqaba. Though arid, it produces a considerable amount of grain and sustains a surprising number of nomads and their livestock.
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From: The Modern Middle East; Emory C. Bogle; Prentice Hall Publishers, Upper Saddle River,NJ;1996