Palestine (disambiguation)

For cities in the US named Palestine, see: Places in the US named Palestine

The neutrality of this article is disputed.

Palestine (Latin Syria Palestina, Hebrew Palestina [פלשתינ&#1492] or Eretz Yisrael [ארץ־ישראל], Arabic Filasteen [فلسطين]), is a region in the Middle East extending inland from the eastern shore of the Mediterranean Sea. Its extent has varied over time. Palestine is not an independent political entity that is recognised by most of the international community.

Boundaries and Political Divisions

Palestine is the area bordered by Jordan, Egypt, Syria, Lebanon, and the Mediterranean Sea.

History of Palestine

Main article: History of Palestine

Political and military control

In the West Bank and Gaza Strip, many citizens are under administration of the Palestinian Authority (PA). Some advocates, the United Nations and even the Government of Ariel Sharon describe the Israeli-controlled portions of these territories to be "under Israeli occupation" (see "occupied Palestinian territories"). A large portion of the international community considers "Israeli settlements" in the West Bank to be a in violation of international law, particularly given the adoption of United Nations Security Council Resolution 446 in March 1979, declaring them ilegal. They are not considered illegal by the Israeli government.

The Name

Egyptian writings refer to the region as R-t-n-u (for convenience pronounced Retenu). Several names for the region are found in the Bible: (Eretz) Yisrael "(land of) Israel", Eretz Ha-Ivrim "land of the Hebrews", "land flowing with milk and honey", "land that [God] swore to your fathers to assign to you", "Holy Land", and "land of the LORD". The portion of the land lying west of the Jordan was also called "land of Canaan" during the period in which it fell under the control of Egyptian vassals traditionally descended from Canaan the son of Ham. After the division of the Jewish kingdom into two the southern part was called "land of Judah" and the northern part was called "land of Israel.

The name "Palestine" is used in the Bible (Pleshet in Hebrew), to denote the coastal region inhabited by the Philistines. Usage of the term, usually in the form "Syria Palestina", to denote the inland areas as well was common among Greek writers as early as Herodotus. Josephus, however, apparently intended by the name only the land of the Phillistines. The Philistines (meaning "invaders" in Hebrew) were an invading people of obscure origin who were finally subjugated by David and later assimilated into the Jewish people. As noted above, the Romans changed the region's name from "Syria Judea" to "Syria Palestina" in the Second century.

Filastin was the name of one of the districts of Syria during the Muslim empire of the 7th to 11th centuries, and of a somewhat smaller district during the 14th century. After the Ottoman conquest, the name disappeared as the official name of an administrative district but remained in popular and semi-official use. Many examples of its usage in the 16th and 17th centuries have survived. During the 19th century, the "Ottoman Government employed the term Arz-i Filistin (the 'Land of Palestine') in official correspondence, meaning for all intents and purposes the area to the west of the River Jordan which became 'Palestine' under the British in 1922" (Mandel, page xx). Amongst the educated Arab public, Filastin became a common concept, referring either to the whole of Palestine or to the Jerusalem sanjaq alone.

In European usage up to World War I, the name "Palestine" was used informally for a region that extended in the north-south direction typically from Raphia (south-east of Gaza) to the Litani River (now in Lebanon). The western boundary was the sea, and the eastern boundary was the poorly-defined place where the Syrian desert began. In various European sources, the eastern boundary was placed anywhere from the Jordan River to slightly east of Amman. The Negev desert was not included.

Formal use of the word "Palestine" returned with the British Mandate (see above).

Status of territories captured in the Six-Day War

The territories captured by Israel since the Six-Day War are three:

the area north and south of Jerusalem and eastward to the Jordan River, generally called the West Bank, though some Israelis call the region by its biblical names of Judea and Samaria
the Gaza Strip
the Golan Heights (not included in the British Mandate of Palestine).

Israel has annexed the Golan Heights and East Jerusalem. However, the Israeli annexation are not recognized by the United Nations nor by most states, which regard them as territories under Israeli military occupation. Israel had not formally annexed the West Bank and the Gaza Strip first out of an intention to negotiate a peace agreement with Jordan and Egypt using the territories as a bargaining chip. Egypt withdrew its claim for the Gaza Strip in 1979 as a part of the Israeli-Egypt peace treaty signed and Jordan for the West Bank in 1988. This paved the way for Israeli-Palestinian negotiations. After increasing international pressure and the first Intifada Israel began negotiations with the PLO to allow at least for Palestinian self-administration, which resulted in the Oslo accords. Since the Six-Day War, Jewish communities destroyed in the 1948 Arab-Israeli War and new Israeli settlements have been constructed in the territories.

It should be noted that neither the Gaza Strip, nor the West Bank are formally claimed by any generally recognized state -- both Egypt and Jordan revoked their demands to them at the signing of peace treaties with Israel. The "State of Palestine", whose independence was declared by the PLO in the 1980s, claims these territories, but most countries do not recognize the "State of Palestine" as a state. According to the 1993 Oslo Accords, the final status of the West Bank and Gaza is subject to a final settlement between Israel and the Palestinians, temporary agreements now being in place. The status of the Golan Heights is subject to an agreement with Syria.

UN Security Council Resolution 242 (1967) and Resolution 338 (1973) state that the status of the territories needs to be resolved by negotiations, and requires Israel to withdraw from these territories. The Israeli government, and some critics world-wide maintain that the wording of these resolutions is extremely ambiguous and no longer relevant due to the changing political situation in the region.

Modern terminology

Palestine is recognized as a state by many Arab and Islamic states, and as such Palestine is a member of the League of Arab States.

The area of the West Bank has been divided to three zones:

Zone A - area under full control of Yasser Arafat's Palestinian Authority. Currently about 20% of the total territories of West Bank and Gaza.
Zone B - Palestinian administrative control, Israeli military control
Zone C - full Israeli control.

See Proposals for a Palestinian state for a discussion of the current argument for the future development of this situation.

Refugees

Palestinian refugees

The Palestinian refugees left their homes during two events, first in the 1948 Arab-Israeli war and secondly after Israel's invasion of the West Bank in the Six-day war.

On midnight on May 14, 1948, the last British soldiers departed and the new state of Israel was proclaimed. By then, Palestine was already in a state of war, the Arab Liberation Army had entered the land to fight for the Palestinians against the Jews. West Jerusalem and parts of the Old City were under Jewish control, but the city was effectively under Arab siege. Jaffa had been captured by Jews, as well a corridor between the coast and Jerusalem. Arab inhabitants of that area had launched numerous attacks on the young Jewish state's vital route; because of that, several Arab villages had been destroyed according to Plan Dalet, and their inhabitants expelled, in order to remove the Arab siege from Jerusalem.

In response to the declaration of the State of Israel and alleged Jewish atrocities against Palestinian civilians, armies from surrounding Arab states entered Palestine, thus beginning the 1948 war, which was lost by the Arabs.

By the end of this war, there were between 400,000 and 850,000 Arab refugees. (Progress Report of the United Nations Mediator on Palestine, Submitted to the Secretary-General for Transmission to the Members of the United Nations, General Assembly Official Records: Third Session, Supplement No.11 (A/648), Paris, 1948) The Palestinian refugees have not been permitted to return home.

A fiercely contested question is exactly how the refugees came to flee the country. Some hold that most Palestinian Arabs left their homes because they were encouraged to do so by the surrounding Arab states, through various media, such as radio broadcasts in order the clear the area for operations by the invading Arab armies. Some international observers and historians have stated that most of them left because some were driven out by force from the Haganah and the Jewish undergrounds or fled in fear of massacres. Separate articles exist on Palestinian refugees, Jewish refugees and the Palestinian Exodus.

In the Six-day War 1967, 300,000 additional Palestinians were evicted from their homes. 180,000 of them were resettled refugees from the 1948 war which became refugees anew.

The UN's agency, UNRWA has a unique definition for the Palestinian refugees: UNRWA's definition of a refugee also covers the descendants of persons who became refugees in 1948 [1]. This differs from the standard UN definition of a refugee: people who are outside their country of origin (or their habitual residence, in the case of stateless people) and who, due to a well-founded fear of being persecuted for race, religion, nationality, a group membership or political opinion, cannot or will not avail themselves of the protection to which they are entitled [2], which excludes the descendants of refugees (other than dependents) from refugee status.

For a list of camps, see: List of Palestinian refugee camps

Jewish refugees

There were also a large number of Jewish refugees from surrounding Arab states created by the 1948 war. Most of them were forced to leave due to riots, incitement, and attacks against the Jewish community. An examination of IDF files from the time shows that there were also instances of Israeli agents trying to provoke Jewish populations into leaving for Israel.

Resolutions

It is generally recognized that both Jewish and Arab refugees have a right to return home. The United Nations General Assembly Resolution 194 (December 1948) Paragraph 1, states:

"Resolves that the refugees wishing to return to their homes and live at peace with their neighbors should be permitted to do so at the earliest practicable date, and that compensation should be paid for the property of those choosing not to return and for the loss or damage to property..."

In the negotiations between the Palestinian Authority and the Israeli government, both parties signed an agreement saying that financial compensation was a necessary and legitimate way of dealing with many of the refugees from both sides.

External links

Some of the links below represent Palestinian point of view; others represent the Israeli point of view. Unfortunately much of the information on this issue, from both points of view, is closer to propaganda than unbiased factual reporting.

Pro-Israeli links

Pro-Palestinian links

U.N. links

Other sources

Gideon Biger, Where was Palestine? Pre-World War I perception, AREA (Journal of the Institute of British Geographers) Vol 13, No. 2 (1981) 153-160.
Guy Le Strange, Palestine under the Moslems (1890; reprinted by Khayats, 1965)
N. J. Mandel, The Arabs and Zionism before World War I (University of Califormia Press, 1976)
H. Gerber, "Palestine" and other territorial concepts in the 17th century, International Journal of Middle East Studies, vol 30 (1998) pp 563-572
Y. Porath, The emergence of the Palestinian-Arab national movement, 1918-1929 (Cass, 1974)