What is Israel? What is Palestine?

by Charles Lenchner

Published October 04, 2008 @ 02:33PM PST

Everybody knows that Israelis and Palestinians are living in the same strip of land between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea. But how exactly do we define the boundaries of these entities? Fact: Israel has never clearly defined its political borders, unlike nearly any other country in the world. Historians (and biblical archeologists) have filled many years of study with answers to these questions, but our focus isn’t only on facts, or even history; we want to know why this argument, extending far into the past, is still relevant today.

Historical Israel

Israel, or “yisrael” as pronounced in Hebrew, is the name given to Jacob in the Torah – the Hebrew bible or “Old Testament” -- after he wrestled with an angel. His descendents – and by extension, all Jews – are called Sons/Children of Israel. The Torah also details the covenant made between Abraham and God in which land – some of which lies in present-day Israel [JL1] -- is exchanged for loyalty. (The Promised Land!) This pre-existing relationship is affirmed en-masse at Sinai, when (according to midrash) all Jews, past present and future, embraced a covenant with God. The region was divided up by various tribes throughout the biblical period, with Jewish rule over the region ending in 70 C.E., with the destruction of the second temple (more info here).

In the Torah, the land is called Canaan. It was home to many peoples, often affiliated with a particular city. This land was on a border region between the great empires of Egypt Assyria & Babylonia, and the inhabitants did not have a strong national sense of themselves as Canaanites. After the Hebrew conquest, the land continued to be inhabited by many nations living side by side, in greater and lesser harmony. In 928 BCE, Israel endured a split into two rival states: the Kingdom of Israel and the Kingdom of Judea. Both were built around the spine of the Judean and Samarian hilltops, while the coastal cities were often under the sway of Pheonician peoples, such as the Phillistines. (‘Plishtim’ in Hebrew.)In 722 the Kingdom of Israel was conquired by the Assyrians. Its inhabitants were dispersed, and those people – the lost ten tribes of Israel – faded from recorded history. The Kingdom of Judea continued to survive, but under Greek and then Roman control. After the Judean Revolt which ended (badly) in 135 AD, the Romans merged the old ‘Judea’ with other lands and called the new province Syria Palaestina . ‘Palestine’ in this case was nearly identical to ‘Philistine’, ancient coastal rivals of the Israelites. Over the first millennium, the population of Palestine changed drastically. The number of Jews declined and Christians and Muslims rose. Jerusalem faded after the Muslim conquest, as the ‘dark ages’ settled on the former Roman Empire. The Muslim Caliphs occupied Jerusalem in 638 and allowed Jews to return for the first time in 500 years. The number of Muslims began to grow.[JL2]

The Decline of the Ottoman Empire

Palestine emerged as a province – not a very important one – within the Ottoman Empire, and was seen as part of the province of a-Sham[JL3] (Syria), which was centered around Damascus, and included what we now call Lebanon. Within that broad territory, local, tribal, religious and ethnic identities were far more relevant than national ones. Locals and Ottoman officials alike still used the term ‘Palestine’ to refer to the area west of the Jordan River, but it was not an actual administrative unit for hundreds of years. While the vast majority spoke Arabic, regional variations ensured that Arabs from one place would be seen as slightly “foreign” when moving to another. Not like someone from Alabama in New York; more like someone from Scotland in Nebraska.[JL4]

With the defeat of the Ottoman Empire in 1923, and the rise of the British Mandate, which controlled former Ottoman Arab territories, Arab nationalism became a much more popular force. The question of Palestine was part of the Arab narrative throughout the this period, in which European settlers began arriving in large groups to settle in a predominantly Arab and Muslim area, which gave the sense that the British and European Jews were intent on transforming the region as opposed to merely profiting from it, as was the norm in other parts of the Middle East. (Algeria excepted.)

To a large extent this was seen as an insult to Arab and Muslim sensitivity rather than an affront to Palestinian Arabs in particular; Jewish immigration and British rule spurred economic growth, which made Palestine a destination for Arab immigrants from Egypt and Syria.

The Palestinians

So we have to ask – at what point did the former province of Palestine produce a national identity of “Palestinians”? This question has been hotly debated, with some (such as former Israeli Premier Golda Meir) insisting that “there are no Palestinians,” and others (Arab nationalist scholars) claiming that the Palestinians are the original Canaanites. Most scholars today, however, would agree that the notion of a national identity itself is a somewhat artificial, modern, and European import. After it started to spread from Europe, it struck roots in Palestine in the beginning of the 20th Century, and turned into what it is today as a consequence of the Naqba, the Arabic term for the creation of the Palestinian refugees in 1948. Palestinian nationism is the twin of Israeli nationalism, with both being developed, honed and perfected in concert with each other.

It’s All About Boundaries

So what are the boundaries of the land to which Palestinians and Israelis claim affinity? In the case of the Palestinians, the answer is fairly simple: it’s the British Mandate of Palestine, today known as Israel, the West Bank and Gaza. For Israelis and many Jews however, the answer isn’t quite so simple. The religious assumptions championed by modern Zionism include the idea that the “Land of Israel” promised by God to Abraham includes territory which today can be found in Jordan, Syria, and Lebanon. On the other hand, it did not, strictly speaking, include the lands of the ancient Philistines, today’s Gaza Strip.

Zionist praxis from the very beginning was to take what was available and plan for future advances. It was a policy that treated the status quo as elastic. When Jewish immigration was limited, the Yishuv – the Jewish community in mandatory Palestine -- smuggled in new settlers in violation of the law. When partition was affirmed by the UN in 1947 the Yishuv leadership accepted it, but planned to expand the Jewish part. When independence was announced in 1948, Israel formally called for peace with the surrounding Arab states, while at the same time expelling hundreds of thousands from areas considered crucial to the future Jewish state. This mentality is part of the DNA of the Israeli state and Zionist ideology, and has led to an interesting dilemma: at what point do the boundaries of the state reconcile with the Zionist vision?

In other words, are the boundaries of the state constrained only by what is possible, forever? Or is there a way of declaring – enough! Zionists on the left argue that the Green Line -- the 1949 armistice line which defined Israel’s borders until 1967 -- represents the fulfillment of reasonable national ambitions, and separate it from the religious notion of the Promised Land. The right wing Zionists, usually including Orthodox parties, argue that the entire land of Israel should be under Jewish sovereignty, regardless of the demographic situation. But even they do not have a unanimous opinion about whether or not Gaza is part of “the Land of Israel,” and there is no consensus decision that lands beyond the Jordan River – in modern-day Jordan -- should not become part of Israel, if that became possible.

Some in Israel and Palestine argue for a one-state solution founded on secular and democratic principles. This ties back to the original Arab Palestinian vision, articulated by the pre-State Arab leadership and in the PLO Charter (since rescinded). While this vision is formally more consistent with Western values and political systems (secular, democratic) it is seen by most Jewish Israelis as a plan to erase Jewish sovereignty, a path leading to the annihilation of Jewish life in the Promised Land.

Hamas, one of the two leading Palestinian political parties, argues in its founding charter that Palestine is “Holy Islamic waqf,” where “waqf” designates a kind of religious endowment. Under this (thoroughly modern) theology, Palestine doesn’t even belong to the Palestinians, or to Arabs, but to the entire Muslim community. To the extent that this is an authentic mass belief, it’s quite threatening to any kind of kind of coexistence between Israelis and Palestinians. But if it was a political position developed with an eye to strengthening the Palestinian side by playing a “religious card" equal and opposite to the Jewish theology of Zionism, then it is perhaps, as elastic.

Time will tell[JL5] . While god is big enough to be present in all lands, some of her followers compete with each other to root her in real estate.