@SugarandSpiceandAllThingsNaice
The formation of nation states is a relatively new evolution in human society so this isn’t proof that Jewish people were in the region before Palestinians.
It is when we know that Jewish DNA to this day is closest to that of other Levantine populations, such as the Druze, and Samaritans, indicating that Jews today are the direct descendants of the ancient Hebrews and Israelites. 3000 years’ worth of archeological findings also conclusively demonstrate Jewish ancestral ties to the Land of Israel.
One Kingdom was the Kingdom of Canaan. Which as you know, the Israelites invaded and conquered. But the point is that when this happened, the entire region of these city states and petty kingdoms was being referred to as Filistin (Palestine) by the ancient Greeks and Egyptians.
Over time, yes different empires conquered the region, including the Kingdom of Judea which replaced the Kingdom of Canaan, but the name of the larger region as Palestine (in different permutations) endured for over 4,000 years.
Historians have long debated the origins of the name “Palestine.” Most believe that the word derives from the Hebrew and Egyptian word “peleshet,” meaning “migratory.” “Peleshet” was used to describe the Philistines, who settled on the Mediterranean coastline above Egypt, in parts of what is now Israel and Gaza. The Philistines were a seafaring people of Greek origin; in other words, today’s Palestinians are unrelated to the Philistines. In fact, as a people they were completely destroyed during the sixth to fourth centuries BCE, it is clear that no modern nation comes from them, including the Palestinians.
The first use of the word “Palestine” to describe a geographic region was in the 5th century BCE, at least 700 years after the use of the word “Israel.” Like the Land of Israel, “Palestine” was a loose region, describing the coastal strip that runs from Egypt to Lebanon.
Another, newer theory asserts that “Palestine” derives from the Greek word “Palaistes,” meaning “wrestler”; as you might know, the term “Israel” means “one who wrestles with G-d.” According to this theory, the word “Palestine” is a direct, Greek translation of the word “Israel.”
Between 132 CE-136 CE, when the Romans ruled over the Land of Israel (then known as the province of “Judea,” which, as I said, is where the term “Jew” derives from), the Jewish population revolted for the third time against the foreign rulers. This revolt, known as the Bar Kokhba Revolt, ended in complete catastrophe, with 600,000-one million Jews murdered in an act of genocide or sold into slavery. Following the revolt, Emperor Hadrian changed the name of Judea to “Syria-Palestina,” marking the first time that “Palestine” was used as the official, legal name of the region. Historians have long argued that Hadrian did this to sever all Jewish ties to the land, though like nearly everything about Israel-Palestine, other historians dispute this assertion.
It’s important to note, however, that Palestine wasn’t known as Palestine from 136 CE. Its name changed periodically depending on those in power. As recently as the Ottoman period (1517-1917), the residents of what is now Israel-Palestine commonly called themselves “southern Syrians.”"Palestine" was revived as a political name under the British Mandate (1920-1948).
Language spoken as a result of conquest and colonisation do not turn inhabitants into the ethnicity that conquered and colonised them. There are plenty of Palestinian Israeli citizens that do speak Hebrew today right now. Yes, there was an Islamic empire in the region from 600-1920 CE or so but there is no evidence this was accompanied by ethnic cleansing such that the inhabitants were entirely replaced by waves of Arabic peoples.
First of all, The Arab conquerors did not peacefully and naturally integrate with the Indigenous populations; they both committed ethnic cleansing and physical genocide (for example, the 1012 Hakim Edict) as well as forcefully imposed their religion, language, customs, and identity upon the original inhabitants, thus de-Indigenizing them. Those who converted to Islam and Arabized assimilated into the identity of the colonizer and thus acquired the privilege that came with such an identity, at the expense of those who preserved their ancestral Indigenous customs and peoplehood (i.e. Jews and Samaritans).
So yes: Arabs did replace the Indigenous populations. And that is quite literally what settler colonialism is.
So not all people who identify as Arab today literally originated in the Arabian Peninsula; instead, many are people whose ancestors were Arabised through conquest and today speak Arabic and whose culture is Arab culture.
But how did Arabic become the dominant language in all these countries? Just as English became the dominant language in the United States, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand through colonialism, Arabic became the dominant language in the Middle East and North Africa through imperialism.
“Language death” is a term that describes when a language loses its last native speaker. “Language extinction” is when a language is no longer spoken by anyone, including second language speakers.
“Linguicide” refers to the extermination of a language; that is, language death that is caused by human intervention (e.g. colonialism, imperialism, language discrimination) as opposed to natural causes (e.g. natural disasters that decimate communities). It is considered a form of cultural genocide.
Hebrew has experienced language death in the past, but it never experienced language extinction. Like other Indigenous language deaths, the language death of Hebrew was caused by imperialism and colonialism; that is, it was caused by human intervention.
The first wave of decline came during the period of the Babylonian Captivity, when, in 587/6 BCE, the Neo-Babylonian Empire conquered and exiled about 25 percent of the citizens of the Kingdom of Judah. Jews then began adopting Aramaic — the language spoken among the Babylonians. However, Hebrew remained in use as a liturgical tongue.
By 200 BCE — around the time period of the Maccabean Revolt against the Seleucid Empire -- everyday colloquial Hebrew became almost fully extinct.
Then in another wave of linguicide took place during the period of the Arab colonisation of the Levant. Ancient Hebrew names for places (such as Jerusalem, or Yerushalayim in Hebrew) were replaced with Arabic names. By the ninth century, Arabic fully replaced Greek, Aramaic, and Hebrew. This was not an evolution of language, it was done by force.
Surnames are no indicator as these are often modified into the new official language rather than kept original.
My family anglicised their Irish surname to an English version at the turn of 20th C when they emigrated to Britain. That’s not what is going on here, though.
As of 1850, between 200,000-300,000 people lived in Israel-Palestine. By 1900, just 50 years later, the population of Israel-Palestine had doubled (or tripled, depending on the statistics) to around 600,000. Just around 25,000-35,000 new Jewish immigrants arrived during this period, and it’s estimated that only 15,000 stayed, due to harsh conditions. In other words, in addition to natural population growth, Arab immigration to Israel-Palestine from elsewhere was a significant factor in the drastic population increase. This is in stark contrast to the population of Israel-Palestine in the 18th and early 19th centuries, which showed virtually no growth.
Most immigrants to Israel-Palestine during this period were Egyptian Arabs. This wave of immigration started in 1829, after thousands of peasants fled harsh labor laws imposed by the Egyptian ruler, Mehmmet Ali Pasha. Travellers during this period wrote that Bedouin tribes accompanied the peasants as well. In 1831, Egypt invaded Israel-Palestine. Over 6000 Egyptian peasants crossed into Israel-Palestine during the invasion; various Bedouin tribes also arrived with the Egyptian army. Others fled to Israel- Palestine as a result of blood feuds between different clans. Many Egyptian soldiers and administrators also chose to stay in Israel-Palestine.
By the late 19th century, the city of Jaffa had Egyptian neighborhoods all over town.
The British invasion of Egypt in 1882 prompted many Egyptians to flee to Israel-Palestine. A news report from the time stated: “Many of the people come here from Egypt to wait until the danger passes.” Very few actually returned to Egypt.
Today, the third most common last name in the Palestinian territories is “El Masry” (or al-Masry), meaning, quite literally, “the Egyptian.”
Then in the 20th C, Between 60,000-100,000 Arabs immigrated to Israel-Palestine between the two world wars. There are numerous reasons for this migration, most of all, new economic opportunities. It was also during this interwar period that a cohesive Palestinian national identity emerged.
In the early 20th C, many Egyptian peasants came to Palestine to build railroads. In March 1926, a railroad from Egypt to Israel-Palestine was completed, which prompted many young people to leave by train to seek employment in Israel-Palestine. In the 1920s and especially in the 1930s, the coastal plain between Gaza and Jaffa, as well as the area between Gedara and Ness Ziona, Ramle, and Lod became densely populated with Egyptian immigrants.
During World War II, when Jewish immigration was essentially quashed, the British brought Syrian and Lebanese labourers to Israel-Palestine. Civilians also employed foreign contractors, many of whom came to Israel-Palestine without the legal paperwork. Around 2046 foreign contractors were employed in Jewish farms and kibbutzim, of which 14.5-38.3% were Egyptians and Sudanese. Government records from this period state that there were some 14,000 Egyptian and Lebanese labourers. The population increase along the southern coastal plain during this period was almost completely due to Arab immigration.
In fact DNA studies and archaeological evidence have proven consistently that Jewish Israelites and Muslim/Christian Palestinians are both descended from the original Semitic peoples of the Levant.
Both are indigenous, which is why a two state solution where the region is shared is the most just solution to the returning Jewish and the never left Palestinians.
No, you are wrong. Your claim here simply isn’t credible. Where is the 3000+ years’ worth of archeology, DNA science, historical record for those that identify as Palestinian today? It doesn’t exist. Instead, as I explained previously (see above), we have the census and migration records of the previous two centuries which underlines how the sudden population boom between 1850 and 1900 (and later) did not come from natural population growth of people already living there, but from Arab immigration. In the preceding centuries before this period, the population of what is now Israel and the Palestinian Territories had remained stagnant. Travelers at the time described Israel-Palestine as an abandoned backwater province of the Ottoman Empire. That’s not to say that it was empty or that nobody lived there, of course, but it was sparsely populated, according to the official Ottoman censuses.