Palestinian identity is a fusion of land, nation and ethnicity. Many activists claim that indigenous ‘Palestinians’ have been living on the rich, fertile land in Israel for millennia – being recently forcibly pushed out by Jewish ‘settlers’. But the question of their history and identity is much more complex and contested.

Travellers’ tales of a barren land

In 1947, in a speech to the United Nations Assembly, Yasser Arafat (formerly al-Husseini - a relative of the Nazi collaborator, Amin al-Husseini, Grand Mufti of Jerusalem) declared that when “… the Jewish invasion began in 1881 … Palestine was then a verdant land, inhabited by an Arab people in the course of building its life and enriching its indigenous culture ...”¹ This viewpoint is maintained to this day by many Palestinian Arabs and has entered the educational curriculum of their schools, even in textbooks funded by western governments and NGOs such as UNICEF. But how accurate a claim is it? What do the documents of former centuries tell us about the land and its peoples?

Sources are numerous, far too many to list here, and extend back for at least 1,300 years. The early ones include the travel journals and sagas of people such as Bishop Arculf (late 600s), Willibald (721-727AD), Bernard the Wise (867), Sigurd the Crusader (1107-1111), Rabbi Benjamin of Tudela (1160-1173), Sir John Maundeville (1322-1356), Bertrandon de la Brocquiere (1432-3) and Henry Maundrell (1697). Ruination and desolation are common themes. During the Crusades, the land was part of the Kingdom of Jerusalem, which corresponded roughly to present-day Israel, plus southern Lebanon and southwestern Jordan. Though some fertile regions existed, much was barren, so much so that in bad years grain had to be imported from Syria to feed the relatively small ‘Christian’ population. Rabbi Benjamin of Tudela (northern Spain), who travelled extensively during this period, noted ruined settlements and unproductive areas, for example, crossing the now-fertile plain of Jezreel near Mount Gilboa, he remarked, “The country in this part is very barren”, whilst at ancient Shunem he reported a community of “about three hundred Jews”.²

Ruination and desolation are common themes ... Though some fertile regions existed, much was barren, so much so that in bad years grain had to be imported from Syria to feed the relatively small ‘Christian’ population.

In 1895 Pierre Loti stated, “I travelled through sad Galilee in the spring and I found it silent…..As elsewhere, as everywhere in Palestine, city and palaces have returned to dust……This melancholy of abandonment…weighs on all the Holy Land.”³ In 1937 a British Royal Commission quoted an eye-witness account of the condition of the maritime plain in 1913, “The road leading from Gaza to the north was only a summer track suitable for transport by camels and carts . . . no orange groves, orchards or vineyards were to be seen until one reached Yabna village. …. Not in a single village in all this area was water used for irrigation …. Houses were all of mud. …. The ploughs used were of wood …. The yields were very poor …. The sanitary conditions in the village were horrible. …. The rate of infant mortality was very high …. The area north of Jaffa …. consisted of two distinctive parts …. The western part, towards the sea, was almost a desert. The villages in this area were few and thinly populated. Many ruins of villages were scattered over the area, as owing to the prevalence of malaria, many villages were deserted by their inhabitants.”⁴ Such evidence gives the lie to Arafat’s ‘verdant land’. Indeed, much of the rather poor land was willingly sold to the Jews who established ownership through the Jewish National Fund. It was pioneering Jewish labour that  drained swamps, improved land for cultivation and forestry, and installed irrigation.

It was pioneering Jewish labour that drained swamps, improved land for cultivation and forestry, and installed irrigation.

In 1961 Abdel Razak Kader wrote, “The nationalists of the states neighbouring on Israel, whether they are in the government or in business, whether Palestinian, Syrian or Lebanese, or town dwellers, or of tribal origin, all know that at the beginning of the century and during the British Mandate the marshy plains and stony hills were sold to the Zionists by their fathers or uncles for gold – the very gold which is often the origin of their own political or commercial careers. The nomadic or semi-nomadic peasants who inhabited the frontier regions know full well what the green plains, the afforested hills and the flowering fields of today’s Israel were like before. The Palestinians who are today refugees…and who were adults at the time of their flight know this, and no anti-Zionist propaganda – pan-Arab or pan-Islamic – can make them forget that their present nationalist exploiters are the worthy sons of their feudal exploiters of yesteryear, and that the thorns of their life are of Arab, not Jewish origin.”⁵ Unsurprisingly, the author has been ostracised by the Palestinian leadership.

Confusion over the names of the land

Muslim Christian Association Jerusalem 1919In 1919 the first congress of the Muslim-Christian Associations met in Jerusalem to choose representatives for the forthcoming Paris Peace Conference. In their formal resolution they declared, “We consider Palestine as part of Arab Syria, as it has never been separated from it at any time. We are connected with it by national, religious, linguistic, natural, economic and geographical bonds.”6 Then in 1937 a local Arab leader, Auni Bey Abdul Hadi, told the British Mandate’s Peel Commission, “There is no such country as Palestine! ‘Palestine’ is a term the Zionists invented! There is no Palestine in the Bible. Our country was for centuries part of Syria.”7

Arab immigrants into the Holy Land

Commenting on the growth of the Arab population during the decades of the 1920s and 1930s, The Royal Institute for International Affairs reported, “The number of Arabs who have entered Palestine illegally from Syria and Transjordan is unknown. But probably considerable”8, whilst C.S. Jarvis, governor of the Sinai from 1923-36, stated, “This illegal immigration was not only going on from the Sinai, but also from Trans-Jordan and Syria, and it is very difficult to make a case out for the misery of the Arabs if at the same time their compatriots from adjoining states could not be kept from going in to share that misery.”9 The principal lure was the prospect of better employment, both in the operation of the British Mandate and in the fast-developing economy of Jewish agriculture, industry and business.

The mixed ethnic origins of today’s Palestinians

Regarding nationality/ethnicity, Palestinian claims at various levels can be quite confusing. One example at a personal level comes from a pro-Palestinian travelogue article on Jericho by an Iranian-American postgrad: “A friend of mine who works as a tour guide in Bethlehem, for example, frequently tells foreign visitors that Palestinian Christians are the first Christians in the world and they are the same community that has existed since the time of Jesus. He does this as part of an effort to combat Israeli discourses of Palestinian foreignness and Jewish indigeneity that seek to religiously and historically legitimize the contemporary dispossession of Palestinians, and which will undoubtedly be heard on any tour in Israel. But when tourists are not around, he makes no secret of the fact that his extended family migrated to the region in the 1700s from Jordan, where they had lived for more than a millennium.”¹⁰

Establishing priority in the land has led to some remarkable claims that have become part of the current Palestinian narrative.

Establishing priority in the land has led to some remarkable claims that have become part of the current Palestinian narrative. In 2011 a member of Fatah’s Revolutionary Council stated, “The Palestinian people descended from the Canaanite tribe of the Jebusites that inhabited the ancient site of Jerusalem as early as 3200 BCE.”¹¹ Speaking at the Munich Security Conference in 2014, the Secretary General of the PLO, Saeb Erekat, declared, “I am the son of Jericho. …. I am the proud son of the Canaanites and it was 5,500 years before the arrival of 'Joshua ben Nun' who burned the city of Jericho. I will not change my history.”¹² Ironically, this itself adjusts his own history, as the Erekat clan is part of the Howeitat tribal group from Saudi Arabia, and he was born in Abu Dis, south-east of Jerusalem.¹³Saeb Erekat and Israels F.M. Tzipi Livni, Munich 2014. Photo by Marc Müller via Wikimedia Commons

However that may be, recent genetic studies have established that the strongest link with clear Canaanite ancestry is with the inhabitants of southern Lebanon (over 90%).¹⁴ Another study, based on further research from Bronze Age sites with clear Canaanite culture, found distinctive genetic characteristics, and concluded that “the genomes of Canaanites and modern Arabs and Jews became admixed over time, so that the current inhabitants of the Levant are about 50% genetically similar to its ancient inhabitants.”¹⁵ Furthermore, the focus on Arab identity ignores the diverse composition of the Christians who identify as Palestinian, many drawn from Abyssinian, Armenian, Coptic and Greek roots.

Jesus co-opted as a Palestinian

Attempts are even being made to Incorporate Jesus into Palestinian identity. The daily newspaper, Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, proclaimed on December 20th last year, “Jesus, peace be upon him, was a messenger of Allah, and he was the first Palestinian self-sacrificing fighter who was crucified by the believers of the Jewish religion, but it only appeared to them [that they killed him].”¹⁶ A similar claim was made in April this year by Abbas Zaki, a member of Fatah’s Central Committee, “Jesus was a Palestinian. He was a son of Nazareth, he was born in Bethlehem, and he was resurrected in Jerusalem. All the Christians believe that he was Palestinian, and that he was tortured by the Jews.”¹⁷ Apart from their outrageous nonsense, notice the trope of blaming Jews alone for the crucifixion.

It is abundantly clear that Palestinian narratives of identity are fraught with inconsistencies. Truth is the first casualty and deceptions abound.

A narrative built on deception

None of this is to say that Palestinians have no right to live in the Holy Land. Many have been established there for a century or more, and are well established. But, as can be seen from the above examples, many current claims are built on narratives that have no historical basis and are more about invalidating Israel’s right to exist than upholding human and civil rights for all.

It is abundantly clear that Palestinian narratives of identity are fraught with inconsistencies. Truth is the first casualty and deceptions abound. Furthermore, it is particularly odd that the allegation of racism is reserved for Israel at the same time that Palestinian leaders seek to promote entitlement on the basis of racial descent! It is truly tragic that highly-paid media professionals who work on Middle East affairs are not more careful in scrutinising propaganda that contributes significantly to the painful situation in the region once known as Palestine, hurting Arabs, Jews, and others alike. As ever, truth matters!

To read the previous articles in this series, click here for part 1, and here for part 2.

Notes

1. Speech by Yasser Arafat, 1974 | al-bab.com accessed 14 Nov 2021
2. The Travels of Benjamin of Tudela: The Travels of Benjamin of Tudela (sacred-texts.com) accessed 14 Nov 2021
3. Loti, P. (1895), “La Galilée”, Paris
4. League of Nations: Mandates Palestine Report of the Palestine Royal Commission (1937)
5. Kader, Abdel Razik (1961), “Le conflit judeo-arabe”, Paris
6. Kohn, M. (1991), “The Arabs’ ‘Lie’ of the Land, Jerusalem Post, Oct.18
7. January 18, 1919 Muslim-Christian Association to King-Crane Commission : Center for Online Judaic Studies (cojs.org) accessed 13 Nov 2021
8. Palestine Blue Book, 1937, (Jerusalem: British Mandatory Government Printer, 1938), p. 140, quoted in: Gottheil, F.M. (2003) The Smoking Gun: Arab Immigration into Palestine, 1922-1931 :: Middle East Quarterly (meforum.org) accessed 8 Oct 2021
9. Report by His Majesty's Government in the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland to the Council of the League of Nations on the Administration of Palestine and Trans-Jordan for the Year 1935, H.M.S.O, p.14, quoted by Gottheil, op.cit., endnote 4. See also: Jarvis, C.S. (1938), Through Crusader Lands, Sir Isaac Pitman & Sons
10. Shams, A.R., ‘City of the Moon’, The New Inquiry, 21 July 2015
11. Quoted in A Descent Into Palestinian Descent - Israellycool accessed 18 Oct 2021
12. Palestine press news agency | erekat sharply criticizes israel's policies and clashes with livni in munich | the main news (palpress.co.uk) accessed 18 Oct 2021 (online translation from Arabic)
13. PA Negotiator Saeb Erekat Claims Family was Canaanite, in Israel for 9,000 Years | Jewish & Israel News Algemeiner.com accessed 18 Oct 2021
14. Haber, M. et al. (2017) ‘Continuity and admixture in the last five millennia of Levantine history from ancient Canaanite and present-day Lebanese genome sequences’, American Journal of Human Genetics
15. Agranat-Tamir, L. et al. (2020), Genomic History of the Bronze Age Southern Levant https://www.cell.com/cell/pdfS accessed 18 Oct 2021
16. “Jesus… was the first Palestinian self-sacrificing fighter” | PMW Translations (palwatch.org) accessed 15 Nov 2021
17. All Christians believe Jesus was a Palestinian and that Jews tortured him, claims senior Fatah official | PMW Translations (palwatch.org) accessed 15 Nov 2021