Palestine is the “Promised Land” for peoples and religions such as Christians, Jews and Muslims. Due to this it has also been, throughout history, a territory of wars, disputes and religious fanaticism. Conflicts that continue today with the so-called Arab-Israeli conflict. But let’s review the history of Palestine to know where its problems with the Jewish community come from.
ancient history of palestine
According to the archaeological remains found in the region, what we know today as Palestine has been a populated territory for almost 100,000 years. During the bronze age, highly populated settlements began to emerge in the area. Around the 1st millennium BC, the region was an area with a great ethnic variety and over which the main conquering peoples of the time had had sovereignty: Egyptians, Assyrians and Persians.
However, if we are to speak of a historical date on which Palestine got its name, we would have to go back to the year 135. At that time the territory was under Roman rule, but Jewish rebellions were frequent. Suffocated the last of them, the Roman Empire eliminated the Roman kingdom of Judea, giving rise to Syria Palestine. The territory included what is now known as Syria, Jordan, Israel, Lebanon and Cyprus. Its capital was Antioch and some of its main cities were Jerusalem or Palmyra. It is estimated that more than 6 million people lived in the kingdom, including 2 million Jews.
Shortly after the fall of the Roman Empire, Palestine would come under the control of the Arabs. Centuries later came the crusades, the attempt to convert the “Holy Land” to Christianity. With the final failure of the crusades in the area, various sultans and dynasties ruled the kingdom until in the sixteenth century it was conquered by the ottoman empire.
Four centuries of Turkish domination take us to the modern history of Palestine, which begins shortly before the First World War.
Modern history of Palestine
To speak of the recent history of Palestine we must refer obligatorily and in parallel to that of Israelsince the evolution of the Palestinian state is intimately linked to the Jewish interests and those of the European and American powers.
At the end of the 19th century, the development of the Jews caused certain misgivings in some European powers such as France or Russia, which initiated the so-called pogroms. This ends up leading to the union of the Jewish people in the Zionism. In 1897 the Jewish town agrees to the creation of its own State and decides that it must be in Palestine.
At that time, Palestine was a territory in which a majority of the population lived. Arab, along with Christians and a Jewish minority. However, there was an increasing number of Jewish settlers, who even bought the land from Arab or Christian landowners in the area.
At the end of World War I, Palestine remained in the hands of the British Empire (1920-1948). At this time the Jewish influx to Palestine was increasing with the approval of rich Jewish families and a British Empire that did not know very well what to do. A Jewish National Agency was created and the flow of Jews continued to grow until the arrival of WWII.
After WWII and the coming to light of the holocaust, the Jews try to go to Palestine, but the British Empire has kept its doors closed since 1939. Finally, the Jews seek support from the UN and the United States. Great Britain ignores the matter and everything culminates in 1948 with the division of the Palestinian state in 2: Israel and Palestine.
Needless to say how this has affected the coexistence between Palestinians and Israelis, a conflict that even today continues to shed rivers of blood.