Palestine - A Perpetual Problem - Part I

"Go, assemble the elders of Israel and say to them, 'The LORD, the God of your fathers—the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob—appeared to me and said: I have watched over you and have seen what has been done to you in Egypt. And I have promised to bring you up out of your misery in Egypt into the land of the Canaanites, Hittites, Amorites, Perizzites, Hivites and Jebusites—a land flowing with milk and honey." Exodus 3:16-17

With this passage, the God of Abraham, promises most of what is modern day Israel to the Hebrews. Judaism, Christianity and Islam are all considered Abrahamaic faiths, because all stem from the same basic tradition, and all practice a monotheistic faith revering the same God. This writing, and perhaps several more, will explore the history behind the current conflict in Israel, and show that although the conflict in Israel came to a boiling point in 1948, the conflict is much, much older, and in fact, stems from the time of the diaspora and even before.

Following the exodus from Egypt in approximately 1400 BC, the conquest of the land of the Canaanites, Hittites, etc by the Israelites was not easy. Battles raged for decades until approximately 1020 BC, when the Kingdom of Israel was established under its first king, Saul. The united kingdom lasted approximately 100 years until the death of King Solomon in approximately 930 BC. Under Saul's successor, the kingdom split in two, and the two kingdoms, Israel and Judah, remained at odds throughout most of the next 400 years until the Babylonians conquered Judah in 586 BC. The Persians then conquered the Babylonians in 538 and many of the Israelites who had been deported to Babylon were allowed to return.

In 331 BC Alexander the Great conquered Persia, and with it, the remains of the kingdoms of Israel and Judah. Upon his death, a succession of rulers came and went until 64 BC when the Roman general Pompey captured Jerusalem, and brought Israel into the Roman empire. Israel was a client kingdom of Rome under Herod the Great. In 66 AD, militant Jews seized power and revolted against Rome. The revolt was ruthlessly crushed, and Jerusalem was captured and destroyed (along with the Temple) in AD 70. Hundreds of thousands of Jews were either killed outright, taken as slaves, or fled to other countries. In 132 AD a second revolt occurred, known as the Bar Kokhba's revolt. This revolt was suppressed as well, and the Roman province of Judea was then consolidated with the province of Syria.

During this period, lasting from approximately 135 AD to the beginning of the Byzantine period in 330 AD, the Romans gradually managed to eradicate Hebrew as a spoken language and through a variety of onerous burdens and eradicate the Jewish presence in and around Jerusalem. Various Jewish tribes remained as nomads in southern Palestine and eventually became a part of the founding of Islam. Northern Jewish tribes existed until well into the Islamic empires. Byzantine emperors, as Christians, lavished funds upon Palestine and funded the building of numerous churches and other important buildings. The Church of the Nativity and the Church of the Ascension were built during the reign of Emperor Constantine. The late Byzantine period of history was one of Palestine's greatest, with the cities of Jerusalem, Caesarea Maratima and Neapolis reaching their greatest glory and producing a number of important Christian scholars. In 683 AD following the siege of Jerusalem, the Caliph Omah Ibn al-Khattab and Patriarch Safforonius signed an agreement which spelled out the rights of non-Muslim occupants of Jerusalem. Christians and Jews were labeled "People of the Book", and although they were generally granted freedom of religion, they also were subject to additional taxes. Thus began almost 1,400 years of Islamic control of Palestine.

The next article in this series will discuss Islamic control of the region, the beginning of the return of Jews to Palestine, and the problems associated with the birth of modern Israel.