Despite overwhelming archeological, literary-historical, and linguistic evidence, the Palestinians and their supporters claim Jews are not indigenous to Israel. From Yasser Arafat, late Chairman of the Palestine Liberation Organization, to Mahmoud Abbas, current President of the Palestinian National Authority, Palestinians and their supporters have, among other things, denied that King David ever existed or that the First and Second Temples were ever built. More recently, some insist that Jesus was a Palestinian and not a Jew.
These types of claims are all part of the settler colonial narrative and its purpose is to delegitimize Jewish claims to the land of Israel and bolster Palestinian indigeneity claims. If Palestinians can convince people that they inhabited the land before the Jews, it is easier to assert a claim to it.
Indigenous usually means that someone with a historical, cultural, linguistic or religious connection to a location is descended from the earliest known inhabitants of that location. Even a cursory survey of the evidence supports a longer Jewish presence in the land.
The earliest stele (a stone slab or pillar bearing an inscription or design) goes back to an Egyptian Pharaoh describing military victories over Israel in 1207 BCE. Another from the 9th-century BCE mentions the House of King David. Although it is not a stele, a third item from Persian Emperor Cyrus in the 6th century BCE tells of permitting Jews to return from Babylonian exile. And of course, many contemporary tourists have seen Rome’s Arch of Titus, an 81 CE triumphal arch depicting vanquished Jews being paraded after the sacking of Jerusalem. Additionally, there are many Jewish archeological sites such as Megiddo and Masada, and numerous inscribed pottery shards (including one dating back 2,600 years), and coins starting from the 4th century BCE.
The archeological evidence proving Jewish indigeneity is extensive. The ancient archeological evidence for Palestinian indigeneity is non-existent. This is because Palestinians did not exist as a self-conscious historical group until approximately 150 years ago. Mentions of a Palestinian (non-Philistine) population are absent from the ancient literary historical record. There is no mention of them in any Greek or Roman history from the period. The Christian Gospels do not mention Palestinians. Even the Koran does not mention them. It does, however, mention Jews and Israel numerous times.
If the Palestinians do have a claim to indigeneity, it comes from DNA. But even here, the claim is not straight forward. Recent scholarship links the Palestinians and the Jews (including Ashkenazi Jews), to the ancient Canaanites. Both groups have a DNA claim to indigeneity through the Canaanites, but DNA alone is a problematic standard to use. (If it were not, then we all would be indigenous to Ethiopia.) In order to make this claim, a group, as noted, needs evidence of a deep historical, linguistic, cultural, and religious connection to the land they claim. Palestinians cannot do this, at least before relatively recent times.
The name Palestine in its modern usage has been appropriated in a way that obscures the non-indigeneity of the Palestinians. The word was coined by the Greeks and it originally referred to the Peleset or Philistine tribe that lived along the coastal plain adjacent to Judea and Israel. Around 600 BCE, the Babylonians wiped out the Philistines and no identifiable Philistine population survived. Still, the Greeks persisted in using the term for the wider region. However, when the Greeks conquered the area three centuries later, they used the local name, Judea.
The current name for the area really came from the Romans after the near annihilation of the Jews in the Third Jewish-Roman War. In order to blot out the memory of Jewish habitation in the area, Emperor Hadrian renamed the Jewish lands Syria Palaestina.
While the name Palestine endured after Rome’s collapse, not all future rulers of the area used it. The most notable exception was the Mamluk who ruled for roughly 250 years. Even the Ottomans, who ruled for 401 years, did not officially use the term. The name Palestine was brough back into full use by the European powers, especially Britain.
There is a view that Jews and Palestinians should just ignore their conflicting narratives and look forward. But that minimizes the importance the Palestinian narrative has on inciting hatred and violence against Israel and Jews worldwide. Leaving aside the horrific actions of extremist individuals and groups that the narrative spawns, there are other, lesser but still damaging consequences. One in particular concern the Irish and South African governments, and much of their populations. In both cases, the Irish and South Africans draw a parallel between their own colonial experience and that of the Palestinians. But if Jews are indigenous, than this is clearly a false parallel. The English did not settle Ireland before the Celts and the Dutch did not settle Southern Africa before the Zulu or other population groups. Jews clearly settled Israel before the Palestinians.
The Irish compound their acceptance of a false narrative by failing to recognize how frequently the Palestinians, or in earlier days their Arab state patrons, rejected the creation of a Palestinian state. The possibilities for statehood existed in: 1936, 1947, 1967, 1993, 2000/2001, and 2008. In 2000/2001, Israel offered the Palestinians a state in all of Gaza, most of the West Bank, and a capital in East Jerusalem. They rejected it.
In 1921, when Ireland became a state, they did not reject the opportunity because they were unable to include six counties and had to accept limits on their military forces. They seized the moment and started working to improve their situation. Would the Irish today be better off if they rejected statehood and continued to fight? Most likely not. In contrast, the Palestinians have repeatedly refused a state.
The cycle of rejected Israeli peace offers and maximalist Palestinian objectives keeps narrowing Palestinian options. Each successive wave of violence moves Palestinians further from self-determination and statehood. The settler colonial narrative aids and abets this Palestinian doom loop
To get to peace we need Palestinians and their supporters to stop distorting Jewish history so they can demonize Jews and delegitimize Israel. Repudiating, or even moderating, this narrative will be difficult because so much of the stability in the Arab world, such as it is, depends on vilifying Jews and scapegoating them for decades of misrule and economic underdevelopment. And while the Jewish right-wing narrative also undermines peace prospects, it should be recognized that in the 1980s many in Isreal began accepting that the land had occupants, even if they were not indigenous, when waves of Jews joined their resident co-religionists beginning at the end of the 19th century.
Israel’s “New Historians” meticulously detailed the displacement of Palestinians in the earlier period, and this understanding gained a fairly large following in Isreal -- until the Second Intifada killed the peace camp. But where are the Palestinian “New Historians?”
A change in the settler colonial narrative would not in and of itself bring peace, but it would start laying the groundwork for the acceptance of a Jewish state in the Middle East. By acknowledging that Jews also have a right to live in the land of Israel, we may be able to turn away from the persistent negative cycle that forces Israel to take actions that leaves ever shrinking room for Palestinians or their much hoped for state.
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