An abbreviated history of Palestine

Excerpts taken from: http://www.arab.net/palestine/history/pe_canaanites.html

An abbreviated history of Palestine:
Recorded history picks this up about 3000 years ago when the Hebrews came to Palestine and slaughtered all the Cananites
http://www.theology.edu/canaan.htm <---(a good read)


They had a bit rougher time with the Philistines:

"A confederation of Hebrew tribes known as Israelites decisively defeated the Canaanites in about 1125BC. The Philistines, however, who had established an independent state along the southern coast, were another story. Because of their superior military organization and their iron weapons, in about 1050BC, they inflicted a crushing defeat upon the Israelites.
As a result of this defeat, the Israelites united and established a monarchy. The most famous of the Israeli kings, David, ultimately defeated the Philistines shortly after 1000BC."

After this...

" King David took advantage of the weakness of adjacent states and the unity of his own people to establish a large independent country, with Jerusalem as its capital.
Peace and prosperity continued under David's son and successor, Solomon, but at his death in 922BC the country was divided: the north remained Israel and the south became Judah.
A weakened and divided country could not sustain its independence indefinitely; consequently, Israel fell to Assyria in about 722BC and the Babylonians conquered Judah in 586BC. This defeat resulted in the destruction of Jerusalem and the exile of most of the Jews to Babylon -- the so-called Babylonian captivity."

Then came the Persians:

" During their exile in Babylon and the destruction of Jerusalem, the Jews were allowed to maintain their national and religious identity. They did not allow themselves to forget the land of Israel and when the Persians under Cyrus the Great conquered Babylonia in 539BC, the Jews were allowed to return to Judaea, a district in Palestine.
Under Persian control, they were allowed considerable freedom. They rebuilt the walls of Jerusalem and codified their system of social life and religious observance into the Torah. The Jews worshipped a single God, Yahweh, to whom they were bound; indeed Judaism's most important contribution to civilization is perhaps their concept of one ethical God."

Things didn't stay so sweet for long though:

" Persia ruled in Palestine until the country was captured by Alexander the Great in 333BC. His successors -- the Egyptian Ptolemies and the Syrian Seleucids -- tried without success to force Greek culture and religion on the people.
Eventually in the second century BC, the Jews revolted and established an independent state (141-63BC). This lasted until Pompey the Great conquered Palestine for Rome and made it a province of the Roman Empire ruled by Jewish kings."

This conquering the Jews business has a few more chapters to it:

"After Pompey the Great conquered Palestine and it fell under Roman rule, two additional Jewish revolts also occurred -- one from AD66 to 73 and the other from AD132 to 135.
At the conclusion of the second revolt, many Jews were executed. A large number were sold into slavery and the remainder were forbidden to visit Jerusalem. This was the situation in Palestine until AD313 when the Emperor Constantine the Great legalized Christianity in the Roman Empire. His mother visited Jerusalem and Palestine subsequently became a focus of Christian pilgrimage.
The people in Palestine became Hellenized (following essentially Greek customs and traditions) and Christianized and the Byzantines (the Eastern Roman Empire) ruled the area from Constantinople. This lasted, except for a brief Persian occupation from AD614-629, until Palestine was invaded by Muslim Arab armies which captured Jerusalem in AD638."

Ahh the Muslim Arabs finally enter the scene 1700 years later

"Palestine was invaded by Muslim Arab armies which captured Jerusalem in AD638. Thus began 1300 years of Muslim presence in what became known as Filastin.
The land was holy to Muslims because the prophet Mohammed had first designated that his followers must face Jerusalem when praying. The prophet was believed to have ascended to Heaven on a night journey from the area in Jerusalem where the Dome of the Rock was later built. The city was therefore, after Makkah and Medina, the third holiest city of Islam.
The conquering Muslims did not force their religion upon the Palestinians and in fact, it was more than a century before most of them converted. Once they converted, however, they did adopt Arabic and Islamic culture as their own. The Christians and Jews remaining in the country were considered "People of the Book" and as such were allowed control of their communities and guaranteed security and freedom of worship. Such tolerance was -- and is -- rare in the history of religion.
At this time the Muslim empire was ruled by the Umayyads from Damascus and Palestine, as a close neighbor, profited from both trade and religious traffic. In 750, when the caliphate shifted to Baghdad with the Abbasids, Palestine experienced a decline in importance and was somewhat neglected by the new rulers. It suffered unrest and domination by various groups, including Europeans at the time of the Crusades, and later the Mamelukes from Egypt.
As with most of the Muslim world, however, Palestine shared in the golden age of Islam when the Muslim world enjoyed pre-eminence in science, art, philosophy and literature. Greek learning was preserved in no small part by Muslim scholars who, in that way, contributed to the European Renaissance."

Finally it was the Ottomans:

" In 1517 the Mamelukes were defeated by the Ottomans, who ruled Palestine for the next four hundred years -- until the winter of 1917-18.
Under Ottoman rule, the country was divided into districts which were administered by native Palestinians. The Christian and Jewish communities were allowed a large measure of control and Palestine flourished as the Ottomans flourished and declined as the Ottoman Empire began the slow and ponderous progress toward its end.
Palestine's decline in trade, agriculture and population continued until the 19th century. As European powers sought raw materials, new markets and expanded strategic interests, they inevitably came to the Middle East. This in turn stimulated economic and social development.
In the 1830s, Mohammed Ali, the viceroy of Egypt, extended his control to Palestine where he modified the existing feudal order, increased agricultural production and improved the system of education. In 1840, the Ottomans once again took control of Palestine and set in motion reforms of their own."

Then in WWI the Ottomans lost their Middle East Empire. Britain just looked at a map and carved it up. Therefore whole peoples were just cut in half, and a lot of problems ensued that are still going on to this day:

"With Arab help, the British took Palestine from the Ottomans at the end of World War I in 1917-18. The Arabs willingly helped the British because they had been promised independence after the war.
Unfortunately, Britain had also made promises to the Jews -- and the two sets of promises were scarcely compatible. In the Sykes-Picot agreement made with France and Russia in 1916, Britain had promised to divide the regions and rule it with its allies. In 1917 in the notorious Balfour Declaration, Britain promised, in exchange for Jewish help, a Jewish "national home" in Palestine.
The Balfour Declaration of 2 November 1917 was originally a letter sent from the British Foreign Secretary, Arthur James Balfour, to Edmond J. Rothschild, a prominent British Jew and supporter of Zionism. The letter stated the British government's support for "the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people."
It made a further commitment on the part of the British government to make "the best endeavours to facilitate the achievement of this object, it being clearly understood that nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine, or the rights and political status enjoyed by Jews in any other country."
With the Balfour Declaration, Britain's aim was to win the support of Jews for the Allied cause in World War I -- both those Jews in nations at war and those in neutral nations such as the United States. On 24 July 1922 the declaration was incorporated into the League of Nations mandate for Palestine which enumerated the terms under which Britain was given responsibility for temporary administration of the country on behalf of the Jews and Arabs living there.
The mandate lasted from 1922-1948, during which time the British found themselves, because of their contradictory promises, in a most difficult and untenable situation -- but one primarily of their own making. On one hand, the Zionists anticipated large numbers of Jews immigrating to Palestine and even begin to speak of the establishment of a Jewish state. On the other hand, the Palestinians feared dispossession at the hands of the Zionists and naturally rejected British promises to deliver their country into the hands of what were, by virtually any definition, outsiders.
Anti-Zionist attacks took place in both Jerusalem and Jaffa in 1920 and 1921, and a British policy statement in 1922 denied Zionist claims to all of Palestine, limited Jewish immigration but nonetheless supported the idea of a Jewish national home. The British proposed setting up a legislative council as had been done in many of their other territories, but the Palestinians, upon learning of how this was to be done, rejected the idea as discriminatory.
Despite British policy and its back-and-forth nature, first supporting one side and then the other, Jewish immigration did in fact increase. Indeed, after the Nazi victory in Germany in 1933, immigration rose sharply and in 1935 over 60,000 Jews came into Palestine. An Arab revolt based on fears of Jewish domination broke out in 1936 and lasted intermittently until 1939. By that date, Britain had once again limited Jewish immigration and purchases of land and by 1940, the struggle for Palestine had abated for the duration of World War II.
After the war, the struggle resumed and though Britain refused to admit 100,000 Jewish survivors of Nazi death-camps, large numbers gained entry to Palestine by illegal means. In 1947 Britain declared the mandate unworkable and passed the problem over to the United Nations."

I think most of us know the rest. The Jews and Arabs fought a war, the Jews got Israel RECREATED (see "King David took advantage of the weakness of adjacent states and the unity of his own people to establish a large independent country, with Jerusalem as its capital."" Israel fell to Assyria in about 722BC"), and they've been fighting ever since.