Well, before the Assyrians, but yeah. Haven't you read the old testament before? Or someone given you the gist of it? God gave the land to the Jews and told them to kill all the current inhabitants, and promised it would be their land forever. That's how we got in this mess -- someone wrote a book thousands of years ago. That's a pretty high bar for being 'indigenous.' I doubt anyone was ever indigenous anywhere with that approach. Before and during WWII, a lot of Jews went and bought land there from Palestinians. Once they reached a critical mass, they declared a country. Cool little video, but it concentrates a lot on political boundaries and doesn't say much about the ethnic and cultural heritage of the area. Looking at that, you'd think Jews didn't exist between the conquest by the Babylonians and 1948. Really, we've had a minority Jewish community there always, but their fortunes have ebbed and flowed with the various conquests. I think the disappearance of the Hebrew language is probably a good barometer, and scholars say that was probably around 200 AD. So, that's still 1,500+ years where the region isn't identifiably jewish, but that's about 800 years shorter than the map would have you believe.
Well if "indigenous" merely means that you conquered the land and called it yours before someone else conquered the land and called it theirs then the people who call themselves "Palestinians" can say that they are indigenous, but I think that's WAY too loose of a definition. If you can conquer your way into being indigenous, then that makes current day Americans indigenous to the land.
Meh.. there would be a whole lot less Jew killing going on if Israel had been established somewhere else.
Israelis(or those that would become Israelis once Israel came to be) invaded and took over many of the villages that were under control of the Palestinians. They bought some land, and were granted lands.
