where is palestine today?
we’re talking about palestine, texas right? well, it’s right in between dallas and houston:
if you’re a geography savant, we can talk about the other palestine too. if you google palestine, you’ll get a map something like this -
- and you’ll notice palestine isn’t actually on the map. on the far east edge of the mediterraean sea (where the “middle east” begins) you’ll find lebanon and israel, with a couple small areas labeled “west bank” and “gaza strip”. neighboring countries include syria, jordan, and egypt. when people refer to “palestine”, they’re referring to the discontiguous regions of the “west bank” and the “gaza strip”
where was palestine...in the past?
the arab view
when arabs refer to historic palestine, they’re talking about palestine under ottoman control. the ottoman empire ruled palestine from the 1500s to after WWI, when the british and french took over. muslims had more or less ruled the region since the 600s (if we forget about the crusades, which would probably be nice).
as you can see, the ottomans ruled palestine as part of their larger holdings in the area, including syria and jordan. few, if any arabs today hold out hope for a pan-arab nation (though arabs are a notoriously pessimistic bunch). pan-arabism was a real movement, especially in the 1950’s, but nationalism and political islam are now largely seen as supplanting it.
the israeli view
when israelis refer to historic palestine or historic israel, they’re talking about “eretz israel”, or the land which Solomon and David ruled - the biblical palestine of around 1000 BC. jews had begun migrating to the area from egypt in 1400s BC, and were largely expelled from the area by the 100s AD, after the roman sack of jerusalem.
unlike pan-arabism, the movement to establish “eretz israel'' is alive and well. this would expand israel’s current borders to encompass the west bank, gaza strip, western jordan, and substantial portions of syria and lebanon. the modern-day Likud party of israel (which Benjamin Netanyahu leads) was founded in part by Irgun, a terrorist group which espoused this view. Yitzhak Shamir, a former PM of israel, led an even more extreme terrorist organization called Lehi, so it is impossible to say “eretz israel” isn’t in mainstream israeli political thought.
how has palestine changed?
palestine is likely one of the most contested regions in world history, with 28+ regional powers erasing and redrawing its borders since Solomon’s time. let’s go through each of those shifts one by one.
jk, we’re not that into maps. it’s really just the last century or so that matters to understand what’s going on now. the british and french beat the ottomans in WWI, so took control of their arab lands. they drew a map of the region which - excluding palestine & israel - has largely remained the same since:
as you can see, the british ruled the entire area of palestine as one political entity, issuing stamps, coins, and even passports for the native population. after about thirty years of escalating violence against british rule from both the arab and zionist factions, the UK decided to quit palestine (surprise, surprise) and asked the UN to come up with a new map:
this map never really existed in real life, with the 1948 war breaking out before it was truly administered. following that, and several other wars, arab-controlled palestine today is a collection of disconnected towns and villages in the west bank, and the gaza strip:
and that brings us back to the present day, and back to just how wrong Google Maps is when you type in palestine. Google is great at a lot of things (like stalking our every movement) but terrible at illustrating complicated geopolitical slap-fights.
so how’d all this get started?
well, any good conflict starts with food, and the arab israeli conflict is no different. a few jewish mothers claimed donuts were better than baklava, and then the palestinian aunties took offense.
for real though, food is an interesting aspect to this conflict, with the question of who “owns” recipes like hummus, and at what point cultural misappropriation occurs. we’ll cover that in a future hottake, but for now, as with most wars, our conflict starts with land.
the birth of zionism
history has been rough on the jewish people. the pharaohs (possibly including Ramesses II) enslaved their tribes for generations, then they spent basically another generation just wandering around the desert looking for palestine. they did eventually find the holy land, but were forced to leave after 1,400 years when the romans destroyed jerusalem and forcibly evacuated all the local jews to neighboring countries:
over time, jews spread across europe and the middle east, living in small minority communities. by the middle ages, europe had become an incredibly anti-semitic place. european jews were prevented from joining most professions, were confined to living in certain parts of town or the countryside, and were generally targeted as a religious minority. pogroms, or the forced exile of the local jewish population, became routine, especially in eastern europe. a village in france is still named “death to jews”. as if we needed another reason to hate the french, huh?
amidst this persecution, modern political zionism was born. a journalist, Theodor Herzl, wrote a book arguing that the jewish people needed a homeland to call their own, and later created a newsletter and organization (the zionist congress) to further his goal. interestingly, the congress considered resettling in uganda before firmly committing to palestine. Herzl was secular, and actually faced heavy opposition from rabbis and the religious establishment for his views. while zionism has now morphed into a religious movement as much as a political one, it originally was all about that sweet sweet palestinian land.
uhh where’d the arabs come from?
extremists often claim that palestine and/or palestinians don’t exist - which couldn’t be further from the truth. the romans expelled the jewish majority from palestine in the 100s AD, not literally everyone. those who remained - essentially the non-jewish relatives of those ancient jews - formed the peoples we refer to as palestinian today. the national identity of palestine came about post-WWI as the british began blindly drawing lines on maps and as, more broadly speaking, nationalism became a force globally, not just in europe.
in the 600s AD, muslims from the arabian peninsula conquered the area from the byzantine empire (which succeeded the romans), and most of the palestinian people both converted to islam and became arabized. a small jewish population which migrated back to palestine after the end of roman rule were allowed to live in jerusalem by both the byzantines and the muslims. some orthodox christians also remained, remnants of the byzantine empire.
the palestinians were ruled by the a succession of muslim dynasties before the crusaders came in and blew everything up. in a typically medieval fashion, the crusaders slaughtered everyone they encountered, from orthodox christians to muslims and jews. the muslims and jews together fought them off within 100 years, and the ottomans took over until 1515. as we mentioned before, the british took control of palestine after the ottoman empire collapsed as a result of WWI.
the british rule over parts of the middle east and palestine (known as the “mandate”) is when things really started getting messed up. unlike you loyal reader, the british had little to no appreciation for the history of the region and how deep ties on both the arab and jewish sides went. their rule began to unravel almost as soon as it began, resulting in the region as we know it today.
next time on TWR’s hottakes…
we meet a handsome blue-eyed devil named Lawrence of Arabia,
we talk about how much the british suck at...really everything related to governance,
and, we explain how israel won a war against literally all of its arab neighbors