In 1047 BCE, a confederation of Hebrew tribes came together to found the Kingdom of Israel, the first ever unified, sovereign nation state in the history of the land. Though some historians have cast doubt on the existence of a unified Israelite state, in recent years, more and more archeological evidence has suggested that some form of unified state existed, though its grandiosity as depicted in the Torah is contested.
In 930 BCE, the Kingdom of Israel split into two: the Kingdom of Israel to the north, also known as Samaria (after its capital “Shomron,” or Samaria in English), and the Kingdom of Judah to the south. The term “Jew” comes from “Judahite,” as in, “someone from the Kingdom of Judah.” In Hebrew, the words for “Judahite” and “Jew” are the same word: Yehudi.
Our closest ethnoreligious brothers, Samaritans (or Shomronim in Hebrew), are the descendants of the citizens of the northern Israelite kingdom.
When the Babylonian Empire conquered Judah in 587 BCE, the territory of the Kingdom of Judah went on to become a province of the Babylonian Empire (587-539 BCE), the Persian Empire (539-332 BCE), the Seleucid Empire (332-37 BCE), and finally, the Roman Empire, which is depicted in green in the map to the left. “Judea” is merely a Romanized version of “Judah.”
After the Romans crushed the Bar Kokhba Revolt in the year 135, Emperor Hadrian carried out a retaliatory genocide against the Jewish people that took some 600,000 lives. Part of his genocidal agenda was to erase any trace of Jewish presence and autonomy in the land. To do so, he dissolved the Roman province of Judea and united it with Syria, creating Syria-Palestina. Syria-Palestina was then divided into Palestina Prima, Palestina Secunda, and Palestina Tertia. “Palestine” derives from “Philistines,” the ancient enemies of the Israelites in the Hebrew Bible. They were of Greek origin, unrelated to today’s Palestinians.
After the Arab conquest in the 7th century, what is now Israel and the Palestinian Territories became a part of Bilad al-Sham, or the province of Syria. There is a reason early Palestinian nationalists in the 20th century advocated for a unified Palestinian and Syrian Arab state in Greater Syria.
At this time, Jund Filastin, translating to “the military district of Palestine,” was a military district encompassing the green region surrounding Jerusalem.
All throughout 1280 years of Islamic rule, the territories now encompassing Israel and the Palestinian Territories belonged to some variation of a Syrian province.
The map on the left is of Ottoman Syria (1517-1917), which itself was further split up into various vilayets (administrative divisions).
In the wake of World War I, the British and French conspired to carve up the Middle East amongst themselves, thus creating the borders for much of the region as we know it today. The map that we are familiar with as Israel and the Palestinian Territories is a British invention.
The British also chose to revive the Roman name “Palestine” as a political entity for the first time since the year 636.
Transjordan, seen in brown above, was originally assigned to the British Mandate for Palestine (1917-1948), though in 1923, the British handed the territory over to the Hashemite family, an ancient dynasty that traces its origins to the Arabian Peninsula. Throughout the period of the Mandate, Jews were not allowed to settle anywhere in Transjordan.
Until 1920, early Palestinian nationalists wanted Palestine to become a province of the pan-Arabist Greater Syria, which would include Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, Israel, and the Palestinian Territories.
At the first Palestinian Arab Congress 1919, the resolutions included statements such as, “We consider Palestine nothing but part of Arab Syria and it has never been separated from it at any stage…Our district Southern Syria or Palestine should be not separated from the Independent Arab Syrian Government and be free from all foreign influence and protection.”
ORIGINS OF ISRAEL
The earliest known mention of “Israel” in history — and the earliest mention of Israel outside of the Torah — is 3200 years old and was discovered in Thebes, Egypt, in 1896.
The mention is found in what is known as the Merneptah Stele, an inscription by the ancient Egyptian pharaoh Merneptah, who reigned between 1213 BCE to 1203 BCE. The Stele itself is dated to 1208 BCE. It’s written in ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs.
The Merneptah Stele mainly describes Merneptah’s victory over the ancient Libyans. However, three of the 28 lines talk about a separate Egyptian military campaign in Canaan. It reads:
“The Canaan has been plundered into every sort of woe:
Ashkelon has been overcome;
Gezer has been captured;
Yano’am is made non-existent.
Israel is laid waste and his seed is not;
Hurru is become a widow because of Egypt.”
The hieroglyphs used describe Ashkelon, Gezer, and Yano’am as city-states, whereas “Israel” is described as a foreign (to Egypt) people. This suggests that at this point in time, the Israelites did not rule over a unified state, but rather, were a nomadic or semi-nomadic tribe(s). This would corroborate the narrative of the Torah, as the Kingdom of Israel did not become a unified state until some 161 years later.
As a side note, it’s interesting that the first ever mention of Israel in history comes from a ruler bragging about our supposed destruction. Over three millennia later, here we are.
In 1040 BCE, a loose confederation of Hebrew tribes united to form the first centralized state in the Land of Israel, known as the Kingdom of Israel.
The Hebrew tribes originated -- and later split away -- from the Canaanites, a loose group of semi-nomadic tribes that lived during the second millenium BCE; they were the original inhabitants of the Land of Israel. Though depicted as the enemies of the Israelites in the Torah, archeologists, linguists, Biblical historians, and geneticists today widely agree that the ancient Hebrews were originally Canaanites themselves. The Tanakh itself even makes some vague references to the Hebrews’ Canaanite origins. Ezekiel 16:3 tells us, “Thus said the sovereign God to Jerusalem: by origin and birth you are from the land of the Canaanites — your father was an Amorite and your mother a Hittite.” The Amorites were a Canaanite people.
It was customary at the time and in the region for nations to name themselves after their most important deities. For example, Israel’s neighboring Assyria named itself after the Mesopotamian deity “Ashur.” “El” was the most important god in the Canaanite pantheon; over time, the cult of El and of the southern deity YHWH merged to form the Hebrew God as we know Him today. “Israel,” then, translates to “one who wrestles with El [that is, God].”
Until 1948, the United Kingdom of Israel (1047-930 BCE), the southern Kingdom of Israel (930-722 BCE), and the Kingdom of Judah (930-587 BCE) were the only ever sovereign nation states in the entirety of the land’s history. At all other times, the region was a colony, vassal state, or province of some foreign empire whose administrative center was elsewhere. The founding of the State of Israel in 1948 marked the first time that the land belonged to a fully sovereign, independent state in over 2500 years.
ORIGINS OF PALESTINE
Historians have long debated the origins of the name “Palestine.” Most believe that the word derives from the Hebrew and Ancient Egyptian word “peleshet,” translating to “invader” or “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, entirely unrelated to today’s Palestinians, who are an Arab ethnonational group. Some Palestinians, particularly Christian Palestinians and Palestinians from the city of Nablus, have Jewish and Samaritan ancestry, respectively.
The first use of the word “Palestine” to describe a geographic region was in the 5th century BCE, at least 700 years after the first 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. However, unlike “Israel,” Palestine was not a political entity until the Romans renamed Judea “Syria-Palestina” in the second century CE.
Another, newer, more controversial theory asserts that “Palestine” derives from the Greek word “Palaistes,” meaning “wrestler.” If you recall, the term “Israel” means “one who wrestles with God.” According to this theory, “Palestine” is a direct Greek translation of “Israel.”
For hundreds of years, the term “Palestinian” was virtually synonymous with “Jew.” In the 18th century, for example, Immanuel Kant described the Jews in Europe as “the Palestinians among us.” In the early 20th century, Jews used “free Palestine” as a rallying call to establish a Jewish state.
The first Arab Palestinian to identify as Palestinian was Khalil Beidas in 1898, though the term was not universally used until the 1960s. During the 1937 Peel Commission, Palestinian Arab nationalist Anwi Abd al-Hadi told the British, “Palestine is a term the Zionists invented!”
WHY IS THE STATE OF ISRAEL "ISRAEL"?
Though the second Kingdom of Israel was conquered by the Assyrians in 722 BCE, both Jews and Samaritans continued referencing to the land as “Eretz Israel,” or the Land of Israel, for three millennia. When the Maccabees briefly gained a semblance of independence after the Maccabean Revolt (167-141 BCE), they referred to their new semi-autonomous kingdom as “Judea” and “Israel” interchangeably. During the Bar Kokhba Revolt against the Roman Empire (132-135 CE), the revolt leader, Simon Bar Kokhba, was known as the “prince of Israel.”
Even during the British Mandate (1917-1948), the official name of Palestine was the “British Mandate of Palestine (Aleph Yud).” Aleph Yud are the letters corresponding to the abbreviation for “Eretz Israel,” the Land of Israel.
Even so, most assumed that the new Jewish state would be called “Judea,” or “Yehuda” in Hebrew. In 1949, on the first anniversary of the State of Israel, Zeev Sharef, who had been present during the deliberations, explained why the name “Judea” was quickly discarded: “Most people had thought that the state would be called Judea. But Judea is the historical name of the area around Jerusalem, which at that time seemed the area least likely to become part of the state...So Judea was ruled out.”
The Provisional Government of the State of Israel also spent some time deliberating on what the name for the country would be in Arabic. Initially they considered Palestine, or "Filastin" in Arabic, to "take the feelings of the Arab minority into account." But the idea seemed too confusing, because they assumed an Arab state would be established alongside the Jewish state, and that Arab state would likely be called Palestine. As such, the idea was discarded. Instead, Israel is called "Isra'il" in Arabic.
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